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From: "Ralph Turner" <>
Subject: [DNA] Review: Weiner's 'Time, Love, Memory'
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:02:50 -0800
References: <200103140900.f2E90Tv15112@lists5.rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <200103140900.f2E90Tv15112@lists5.rootsweb.com>

Book Review: Weiner, Jonathan: 'Time, Love, Memory - A Great Biologist and his Quest for the Origins of Behavior', Vinage Books (Random House) NY: 2000.

It is nice to be able to be able to recommend a book, wholeheartedly. This book is a review of the work of Seymour Benzer of CIT in Pasadena. And it is also about the science of most of his mentors, students, competitors and critics. In depth. In good and convincing English.

What is his quest and what did he find out? Simply put, it is about his search for the connections between DNA and behavior. He spent much of his time on fruit flies and their behavior, attempting to find atomistic parts of behavior. His findings are applicable to complex behavior, though he does not claim to have taken it into all of human behavior.

Searching for the gene associated with circadian rhythm his students found one on the 2nd chromosome of the fruit fly and another later on the third chromosome. The same gene was found in mouse DNA. "The clock (gene) is also one of the late-twentieth-century biology's best deomonstrations of the family likeness of genetic mechanisms, even between animals as far apart on the tree of life as flies and fungi on the one side and mice and human beings on the other Since the Cambrian period, all over the face of the earth, the clock genes have intermesthed with one another and also with the sunrises and sunsets overhead" p 193.

A point is made that there are not just one gene to a behavior trait but rather: "the discovery of one genewas followed almost immediately by the discovery of many more that intermesh with it." Here he was referring to the an analog with the 'obesity gene complex.'

In a diagram reproduced in this book, titled 'a fate map,' which was taken in turn from Benzer's 'Genetic Dissection of Behavior' published by Scientific American, there is a diagram of a fly embryo showing where the parts of the adult fly develop. "After making this fate map, he (Benzer) and his students traced pieces of behavior back to the surface, too, including many of the dance steps of courtship and copulation." p 123

Tackling the tough subject of behavior and its genetic components, Benzer touches on the three subjects of Weiner's title. He illustrates the steps the scientists had to take to make any inroads into this highly charged subject. The objectivity and experimental perseverence and creative thought necessary to discover some inkling of the genetics of behavior is laid out in a very readable way in this book.

Weiner won a Pulitzer prize for another book: 'The Beak of the Finch.' His 'Time, Love and Memory' has 41 pages of notes, acknowledgements and an index. I have found the index especially useful. This book is also a biography of Benzer with photographs to illustrate his life. But the main discussion is of Benzer's work on the genetics of behavior.

For the genealogist we can only expect now that more than eye color and propensity for particular diseases will eventually be traceable, that all of human characteristics will be fair game. There is some discussion in the book about genealogy but this is not a book written with that focus.

Ralph J. Turner
16 March 2001

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• [DNA] Review: Weiner's 'Time, Love, Memory' by "Ralph Turner" <>