An amazing, honest and humbling look into the race to discover the structure of the 30 subunit and 50 subunit structure of the ribosome. Venki's journey from grad school to the foremost of science, his struggles in the cut-throat, competitive world of academia, frustration with troublesome colleagues are presented quite well here. A fast-paced read!

My Rating - 4.5/5

What an interesting little book! I have to say, I never thought I'd read a book that centered so much around the ribosome, but my high school biology teacher would be proud. Ramakrishnan's life and story gripped me from the start and he did well incorporating both science and memoir into his novel.

This book has to be on everyone's must read list! My only quibbles are that one chapter was a little to scientific and the chapter on all of the available prizes was unnecessary. Again, everybody must read this excellent book!

Interesting book even though i think that it is not for everyone, since i think that if you don't already have a bit of an understanding of gene's and how biology works you will get a bit lost in this book and what it is talking about.
Still very informative and defiantly worth a read if you do have a bit of knowledge on the topic already!

Excellent memoir/history of science but technical in parts

I loved this book. Author Venki Ramakrishnan tells a great story about his work on the ribosome, the part of the cell that reads the genetic code and translates it into proteins. He describes in detail the techniques used and the results. This is perhaps one weakness of the book, as Ramakrishnan used the very complex technique x-ray crystallography. I didn’t understand much of the finer details but I did understand enough to get the broad brushstrokes. To me, this isn’t a big deal, because it isn’t a huge part of the book. The book is the author’s memoir, and his stories about his family and personal life, studies, and travels are fascinating. Equally fascinating were the stories about competition in science and basically how science works. The book is well paced and Ramakrishnan held my attention from page to page, except for the occasional too-technical pages. Ultimately, Ramakrishnan’s work won the Nobel Prize but he is honest in the analysis and criticism of the process. This book is well worth reading for anyone interested in the history of science.

Almost everyone with some formal education behind them knows or have at least heard about DNA, the genetic library of our cell but how about Ribosomes? The very machinery that translates the genetic material to protein, not as glamorous as DNA right? In Gene Machine by Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan takes us on a journey that ended with discovery of structure of the ribosome to be precise it's two units 30S and 50S. Figuring out a structure of a biological molecule during the times when electron microscopy was in its infancy certainly was a challenge that was mitigated by crystallography. The book describes in details the struggles, the collaborations, the competition, the passion and above all helpful nature of fellow scientists without whom it would have taken just a little longer for this breakthrough discovery. On a personal level this is a memoir of Dr. Ramakrishnan, Indian born scientist who went on to win a Nobel price for his work on ribosome structure. Apart from the chapters dedicated to details about crystallography and extensive discussion of structure of biological molecules, he reflects on the practice of rewarding scientists it's pros and cons and how there are many new awards that compete with Nobel price such as Breakthrough award that is almost 7-8 x more financially rewarding. However, I highly doubt that anyone would trade the Nobel for any other science prize. No discovery is made in isolation and collaboration is how science develops and new inventions are made. This is no better proved anywhere else as in the case of ribosomal research. Ideas were borrowed, data obtained by someone else manipulated, research methods were copied. In the end it was a matter of right people with right skills coming in close contact that won them a Nobel. Dr. Ramakrishnan is frank in showing his gratitude to all those who helped him and it speaks volumes of the his humble nature.

For me this book was interesting apart from my usual interest in science is that how Dr. Ramakrishnan who was born in the same state, Gujarat in India went on to become a grad student in physics and then changed his research to molecular biology and persisting at it for 30+ years and eventually winning a Nobel and eventually becoming president of Royal Society joining the ranks of Newton and Rutherford who were former presidents certainly gives one goosebumps. That in itself is a larger than any success story.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in history of structural biology as it applies to ribosomes. Even if you are peripherally knowledgeable of biology of subcelluar molecules, this book is worth your time. I think it will make a great gift for a grad student in biology.

This book focuses on the second part (RNA → Protein) of Central Dogma (DNA → RNA → Proteins).

I'd recommend this book to anyone who read and liked Sapiens or Homo Deus. A fascinating overview into a theme that is most often than not not really present in the mainstream.