Name: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, Paperback/David Quammen
Brand: Simon & Schuster
Price: 120.99 RON
Availability: InStock

Descriere & specificații

Description In this New York Times bestseller and longlist nominee for the National Book Award, "our greatest living chronicler of the natural world" ( The New York Times ), David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology affect our understanding of evolution and life's history. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field--the study of life's diversity and relatedness at the molecular level--is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important; we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived sideways by viral infection--a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree , "the grandest tale in biology....David Quammen presents the science--and the scientists involved--with patience, candor, and flair" ( Nature ). We learn about the major players, such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about "mosaic" creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health. "David Quammen proves to be an immensely well-informed guide to a complex story" ( The Wall Street Journal )