Identically Different: Why You Can Change Your Genes

(Paperback)

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*A brand new and updated edition for 2024, including the latest insights on diet and weight management drugs, gene editing, cancer testing, anti-ageing, ultra-processed foods and much more*

Professor Tim Spector, number one bestselling author of SPOON FED and FOOD FOR LIFE, reveals the astonishing new science that is changing everything we thought we knew about genes and identity.

Since the discovery of DNA, scientists have believed that genes are fixed entities that cannot be changed by environment. Spector's pioneering epigenetics studies, and the latest genetic research, show that our genes are more like plastic, able to change shape and evolve, and these changes can be passed on to future generations.

This dazzling guide to the hidden world of our genes will make you rethink everything from sexuality to religion, cancer to autism, politics to pubic hair, clones to bacteria, and what it is that makes us all so unique and quintessentially human.

Tim Spector's book turns genetics on its head. Lucid, surprising and with a very human face. It brings epigenetics alive. It is a great read! Michael Mosley

Reviews

Tim Spector's book turns genetics on its head. Lucid, surprising and with a very human face. It brings epigenetics alive. it is a great read! -- Michael Mosley
It is a complex concept, but Spector drifts easily through difficult scientific explanations, offering lucid, easy-to-follow prose... a provocative read. * SUNDAY BUSINESS POST *
This science book guides us, via artful storytelling and ground breaking research using identical twins, to reconsider the flexibility and power of our genes. -- Ijeoma Onweluzo * THE LADY *
It is provocative stuff, but all couched in the fresh and fast-paced style of popular science. * GOOD BOOK GUIDE *
Spector will get you through many dinner parties. But, much more importantly, he will show how a certain kind of scientific fundamentalism collapsed under the burden of its inability to explain the world as it is - complex, flowing, changing - rather than as they would like it to be - simple and clear. Read him. * SUNDAY TIMES *
A fascinating and provocative book...Spector is a talented story-teller, weaving real-life accounts of identical twins into each chapter...This is an informative and thought-provoking tour of some of the most exciting areas in biology right now. Spector concludes by inviting us to imagine a future in which we see our genes as malleable, rather than as masters of our biological destiny - just one part of the endlessly complex and fascinating story of what makes each of us unique. * NEW SCIENTIST *
Identically Different is a fresh and though-provoking book on how the environment affects epigenetics. * BBC FOCUS MAGAZINE *
In Identically Different, Tim Spector, a world-renowned authority on twins, introduces us in an entertaining, eloquent and expert way to the new (yet old) science of epigenetics: the study of how the environment can influence our genes and how those influences can be passed on to future generations. * TES *
This book is a fascinating exploration of our current understanding of what makes us what we are: health, behaviour, and personality. * JOURNAL OF TWIN RESEARCH AND HUMAN GENETICS *
Tim Spector's book turns genetics on its head. Lucid, surprising and with a very human face. It brings epigenetics alive. it is a great read! -- Michael Mosley
It is a complex concept, but Spector drifts easily through difficult scientific explanations, offering lucid, easy-to-follow prose... a provocative read. * THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST *
This science book guides us, via artful storytelling and ground breaking research using identical twins, to reconsider the flexibility and power of our genes. -- Ijeoma Onweluzo * THE LADY *
It is provocative stuff, but all couched in the fresh and fast-paced style of popular science. * THE GOOD BOOK GUIDE *

Author Bio

Tim Spector is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London and hon consultant Physician at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital. He set up the Twins UK register in 1993, the largest of its kind in the world, which he continues to direct. He has won several academic awards and published more than 500 academic papers. He has appeared in numerous TV documentaries and is often consulted in British and international media on his team's cutting-edge research.