From everyday life on the dinner table to the genes inside our cells
“60 Scientific Perspectives on the World in a New Light”
Winner of the Udayo Science Popular Book Award
A delightful science essay by a world-renowned geneticist
"Every story is filled with surprise and exclamations of 'Ah! So that's what it was!'"

When the rice grains inside the hot cannon are pushed out by the strong pressure, they do not shatter into pieces, but rather, they maintain their original shape and transform into puffed rice cakes that have puffed up several times their size.
The infamous piranhas of the Amazon River are actually very timid and swim in schools to protect each other.
Contrary to our misconception, they are actually afraid of people.
"A New World Opened by Scientific Thinking" begins with this very trivial scene.
This book takes a fresh look at the small cracks in the world we have become so accustomed to that we have overlooked them, through the eyes of a geneticist.


The author, Cheon Won-seong, is a professor emeritus at National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan and a geneticist.
He is a person who analyzes DNA in the lab, but also observes the veins of tree leaves outside the window and thinks about the order of their structure.
As a winner of the Udayo Science Popular Book Award, this book also looks at the world through the eyes of a scientist, but expands that perspective with warmth.
More important than the results of the experiment is the attitude of asking, “Why is that so?” or, in other words, the power of questioning.
Ultimately, what this book teaches us is one thing.
Only those who think and ask questions can see the world in a new way.


When you open the book, 60 interesting articles follow each other like a continuous flow of thoughts.
The genetic code is read like sentences, and cells communicate with each other by sending and receiving signals.
While drinking soda water, I am left speechless at the thought of the atrocities humanity is inflicting on the environment, and while making coffee or frying rice noodles in the kitchen, I am explained the amazing technology called 'gel filtration'.
Following the gaze of a geneticist, a new world of scientific knowledge not covered in textbooks unfolds, allowing us to naturally understand scientific phenomena and principles hidden in our daily lives, as well as important scientific thinking methods and concepts that can easily be overlooked.

In Taiwan, the book was praised as “a living, breathing science outside the textbook.”
Another high school science teacher commented, “This book is truly an enjoyable journey through the joys of science.”
Can a scientist's writing be this warm, entertaining, and exciting? This book proves it.

** Anderson sealed the starch in a test tube and heated it in an oven until the starch turned golden brown.
Then he took out the test tube, put it in a wire mesh bag, and smashed it with a hammer.
As a result, in three test tubes the starch exploded like a shotgun, but in the fourth test tube the starch was fully cooked and formed a porous mass.

Anderson observed this under a microscope and discovered that the starch granules were expanding and exploding.
He had the brilliant idea that if he could apply this technique to bread making, it might be possible to make bread rise without yeast or baking soda.


** Because the cell density of plants is generally low, the concentration of purines is also relatively low.
However, in the growing points of plants, cell division is active, so the concentration of purines is higher.
Perhaps for this reason, the purine concentration in sprouts and young leaves was 2-3 times higher than in mature parts.
On the other hand, fruits are mainly composed of carbohydrates and cellulose, so they have relatively few cells and therefore do not have a high concentration of purines.


** Darwin suffered from illness throughout his life, and his children also suffered from poor health from an early age.
Three of their ten children died before they reached the age of ten, and three of the surviving children married but had no children.
When his second and third children died in infancy, he wrote to a friend expressing his concern that the deaths might have been the result of incest.
He also wrote to the British Parliament requesting an inquiry into the frequency of consanguineous marriages and the health of their children, but Parliament declined to do so.


** Professor Walter Harm from Germany published a paper showing that caffeine inhibits the photorepair mechanism of bacteria, making it impossible for them to repair damage caused by ultraviolet rays.
Back then, we often got together with the faculty in the evenings to play volleyball, and after that, we would joke around and say, "You shouldn't drink coffee before playing volleyball."
It wasn't until years later that we realized that humans had no natural light recovery mechanism in place, and that we had been worrying for nothing.


** A certain mountainous region has clean air and residents have long practiced healthy eating, yet the cancer rate in this area is higher than the national average.
Does this mean that clean air and a healthy diet actually cause cancer? Of course not.
The real reason is that people in this area live long lives.
Because age is one of the biggest risk factors that increases the likelihood of developing cancer.


** George Bernard Shaw said this:

“If you exchange one apple for one apple, we would still have only one apple.
But if you exchange your ideas with mine, we each end up with two ideas.”
Active interaction among scientists is essential to the success of modern science.
Great scientists and great discoveries never come into existence in a vacuum.

** Based on the principle of suppressor mutations, it can be seen that the same mutation can lead to completely different results in populations with different genetic backgrounds.
In fact, if you analyze the human genome database, you will find that there are people who carry lethal pathogenic mutations but do not develop the disease.
This could be interpreted as the presence of one or more suppressor mutations in their genome that offset the lethal mutation.


** The mRNA used in the COVID-19 vaccine was designed based on the S gene, which constitutes the spike protein on the surface of the virus.
They first chemically synthesize a DNA template of the gene in question, then transcribe and perform specific chemical modifications using RNA polymerase in a test tube.
Finally, the completed mRNA is wrapped in nanolipid particles and injected into the body while protected.
After injection, these particles are taken up by dendritic cells, which specialize in presenting antigens in the bloodstream.
The mRNA released from the particles is translated into the spike protein on the surface of the COVID-19 virus, which is then presented on the cell surface to stimulate the immune system.


** A friend once asked me if hard liquor could kill the coronavirus.
The alcohol content of high-quality liquor usually varies from 38 to 63%.
High-alcohol liquor can also be used as a temporary (albeit somewhat extravagant) disinfectant in emergency situations.
However, drinking it has no effect.
Because coronaviruses invade through the respiratory tract, not the digestive tract.


** There is a sentence in 『The Outline of the Future』 that I read with great interest.

“The old notion that humans invented tools is actually only half true.
More precisely, tools invented humans.”
How can tools invent humans? He continues.

“It was not humans but apes that first used tools.
But the tools they created eventually led to their extinction.”

--- From the text