Immortal

Immortal: Our Cells, DNA, and Bodies synthesizes what we know about life and death from a genetic, molecular and cellular perspective, demarcates our limits of knowledge, and forces us to ask new questions. Here, award-winning researcher, physician, and NIH Lab Director David Gold Goldman comprehensively examines three keys to understanding the nature and continuity of life: 1) Epigenetic (ephemeral) vs. genetic (durable) transgenerational memory, 2) Life’s cellular nature and the ability to make bodies from cells, and 3) The distinction between bodies and persons.

Grounded in recent scientific evidence and real-life cases that test our historical understanding of life and death, this book probes the nature of molecular continuity in the face of mortal extinction, encompassing how changes to the DNA code can be both long lasting and transgenerational.

• Applies recent genetic, molecular and cellular findings to examine the boundaries between living and non-living, and between person and non-person
• Examines the significance of epigenetic memory and transgenerational inheritance and their role in molecular and precision medicine
• Written by a thought-leader in genetic and molecular medicine

Active researchers, basic and translational scientists, and clinicians in the areas of human genetics, genomics, molecular biology, cell biology, neuroscience, aging, and physiology, internal medicine; bioethicists clinicians and students of life science, genetics, and medicine; engaged general public

1. Death
2. HeLa: The resurrection of Henrietta Lacks
3. Persistence of memory
4. Hel: Goddess of death and life
5. Where self-resides
6. Our diploid selves
7. Our cellular selves
8. From molecule to self
9. The ancient divide between molecules and self
10. Persistence of epigenetic memory
11. Altruism, of cell and self
12. Shrine or museum?
13. Robbing the grave
14. Birth
15. I am Anastasia