Lamarck's Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution's Past and Present

Ward, Pete

ISBN 10: 1632866153 / ISBN 13: 9781632866158

Edité par Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018

A propos de cet article

The book is complete and readable, with all pages and cover intact. Dust jacket, shrink wrap, or boxed set case may be missing. Pages may have light notes, highlighting, or minor water exposure, but nothing that affects readability. May be an ex-library copy and could include library markings or stickers.

N° de réf. du vendeur BSM.NODV

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Lamarck's Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution's Past and Present
• Éditeur: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Date de parution: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 1632866153
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781632866158
• Reliure: Couverture rigide
• État de l'article: acceptable

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Epigenetics upends natural selection and genetic mutation as the sole engines of evolution, and offers startling insights into our future heritable traits.

In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first described epigenetics to explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics; however, his theory was supplanted in the 1800s by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through heritable genetic mutations. But natural selection could not adequately explain how rapidly species re-diversified and repopulated after mass extinctions. Now advances in the study of DNA and RNA have resurrected epigenetics, which can create radical physical and physiological changes in subsequent generations by the simple addition of a single small molecule, thus passing along a propensity for molecules to attach in the same places in the next generation.

Epigenetics is a complex process, but paleontologist and astrobiologist Peter Ward breaks it down for general readers, using the epigenetic paradigm to reexamine how the history of our species--from deep time to the outbreak of the Black Plague and into the present--has left its mark on our physiology, behavior, and intelligence. Most alarming are chapters about epigenetic changes we are undergoing now triggered by toxins, environmental pollutants, famine, poor nutrition, and overexposure to violence.

Lamarck's Revenge is an eye-opening and provocative exploration of how traits are inherited, and how outside influences drive what we pass along to our progeny.

À propos de l?auteur

Peter Ward is Professor of Practical Theology Durham University, UK and Professor of Practical Theology at NLA University College Bergen, Norway.