Includes bibliographical references and index.

From breeding to a science of heredity -- The origins of domestic plants and animals -- The rise of agriculture and domestication -- Early ideas of inheritance -- The girl who gave birth to rabbits -- Heredity and the theory of evolution -- Gregor mendel discovers the laws of heredity -- Classical genetics (1900-1950) -- Cell theory and the discovery of chromosomes -- The rediscovery of mendel's work -- The debate over natural selection -- Chromosomes and heredity -- Sex and the X-Y chromosomes -- Fruit flies and the birth of the modern laboratory -- Gene maps -- Chromosome puzzles -- Maize and "jumping genes" -- "One gene makes one enzyme" -- Molecular genetics: what genes are and how they work (1950-1970) -- Physics stimulates new ways of thinking about genes -- Genes are made of DNA -- The double helix -- RNA is the messenger -- The architecture of genes -- On-off switches for genes -- The flow of information from gene to protein in complex organisms -- The rise of genetic engineering (1970-1990) -- Recombinant DNA -- "Natural" genetic engineering -- Molecular cloning and using bacteria as drug factories -- DNA sequencing -- The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) -- Making and marketing genetically modified plants and animals for food -- Knock outs, knock ins, and other methods to study gene functions -- Beatrice Mintz: a pioneer of mouse genetics -- Transgenic animals and models of human disease -- DNA fingerprinting -- Genetic engineering in the age of genomes -- The complexity of genomes -- Introns and alternative splicing -- Non-coding RNAs -- Quality control: how cells detect defective genes -- RNA knock outs -- Molecular machines -- Conditional mutagenesis -- Other methods of controlling the output of genes -- Molecular medicine and gene therapies -- Personalized medicine in the genome age -- DNA vaccines and t cell therapies -- Ethics and genetic engineering -- Reproductive cloning -- Therapeutic cloning and experiments with human cells -- Genetic testing and concerns about eugenics -- GM foods and the rise of environmental movements -- Owning genes, genomes, and living beings -- A look farther ahead.