With the discovery of the clock gene, the sense of time,
mysterious for so many centuries, was no longer a mystery that could be
observed only from the outside. Now it could be explored as a mechanism from
the inside. The discovery implied that behavior itself could now be charted and
mapped as precisely as any other aspect of inheritance. Qualities that people
had always thought of a somehow floating above the body, apart from the body,
as if they belonged to the realm of the spirit and not of the flesh, as if they
were supernatural, might be mapped right alongside qualities as mundane as eye pigment.
"Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for
the Origins of Behavior"
Science writer Jonathan Weiner is author of Pulitzer Prize
winning, "The Beak of the Finch." His new book, "Time, Love,
Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior," is
about biologist Seymour Benzer's work with fruit flies and the development of
modern genetics,
HB: Seymour
Benzer seems like a guy who followed his own instincts. If the crowd was going
in one direction, he was likely to go the other way.
JW: Always. He
started out in physics, doing work that led to the invention of the transistor,
then got out of there, because it was getting too hot, almost immediately. All
of his friends said, you can get rich. He didn't want to get rich. he wanted to
get to the next mystery. On to the gene.
