Myles W. Jackson
The MIT Press, February 2015
CCR5 has been through a lot. Since scientists first sequenced it in the 1990s, the human nuclear gene—about 6,000 base pairs, located on chromosome 3—has gone from needle in a genomic haystack, to scientific curiosity, to patented product, to genetic blueprint for a key HIV coreceptor, to hotly researched potential target for AIDS drugs and vaccines. In The Genealogy of a Gene, New York University historian of science Myles Jackson exhaustively describes CCR5’s journey through wet labs, the US patent office, biopharmaceutical firms, popular consciousness, and beyond. “In short, the gene’s genealogy is a complex and intertwined one,” he writes, “including lineages of biocapitalism, the sciences of chemokines and HIV/AIDS, the Human Genome Project and the HapMap, ...
