Can a parasite lead an insect to suicide and humans to schizophrenia? Can the "silence" of a gene affect cancer? What role can our biological clock play in its treatment? Will humans live hundreds or even thousands of years, applying the right combination of chemical and genetic strategies? Is the development of mammals, and therefore our species, due to the wave of retroviruses that flooded the Earth 170 million years ago? Which amazing women understand the lie from the color of our face and how much danger can a painless life hide? Why did mitochondria lead to the death of the 27-year-old Swede who sweated even in very cold weather?

In a narrative style, often in the first person and always with a philosophical, sometimes poetic, mood, the author, trying to answer the above questions and many others, transports the reader into an exciting world that until now seemed incomprehensible and inaccessible: the invisible world of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Biochemistry, and Genetics. The world of self-awareness.

"Beyond the Genes" includes a series of articles-essays published by the great Austrian biologist and biochemist Gottfried Schatz in the supplement of Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ), the most serious and reliable Swiss newspaper.