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Overview
"Why isn's all life pond-scum? Why are there multimillion-celled, long-lived monsters like us, built from tens of thousands of cooperating genes? Mark Ridley presents a new explanation of how complex large life forms like ourselves came to exist, showing that the answer to the greatest mystery of evolution for modern science is not the selfish gene; it is the cooperative gene." "In this thought-provoking book, Ridley breaks down how two major biological hurdles had to be overcome in order to allow living complexity to evolve: the proliferation of genes and gene-selfishness. Because complex life has more genes than simple life, the increase in gene numbers poses a particular problem for complex beings."--BOOK JACKET.Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Why are there large, complex organisms at all and not just lots of bacteria? Oxford researcher Mark Ridley posits that the action of "cooperative" genes allows complex beings, such as ourselves, to exist.Kirkus Reviews
For all the talk of "selfish genes," there's considerable evidence that advanced life evolved from cooperation between genes. Ridley (Zoology/Univ. of Oxford) contends that the existence of life appears to be a near-trivial chemical phenomenon. Shortly after conditions became favorable for life to exist on Earth, there were simple lifeforms growing in all available niches. Simple cells, the equivalent of our bacteria, may well have evolved on all planets capable of supporting them. But the step to complex life—the eukaryotic cell, with a nucleus and organelles—took much longer to develop, and may be rare in the universe as a whole. The eukaryotes appear to have come about in a partnership between unrelated lifeforms, one of which survived ingestion by the other and proved its value by enhancing the new cell's ability to utilize energy sources. The ingested cells became organelles: the mitochondria, which enable the use of oxygen in metabolism, and choroplasts, the agents of photosynthesis in plants. But these adaptations (like a merger in the business world) required careful division of rights and responsibilities to avoid civil war. The most startling consequence of this primordial merger was the invention of sexual reproduction. Here, the male cell sacrifices its mitochondrial DNA, which the offspring inherit only from the maternal side. Ridley gives a detailed explanation of these processes in evolutionary terms, focusing on the exchange of genetic material and on dirty tricks certain genes play—and why, despite their selfishness, such "assassin" genes do not dominate the gene pool. Inevitably, the material is highly technical, especially in the latter chapters,but readers willing to work will get a clear view of some of the key issues in evolutionary genetics. Worth a look for anyone with a strong interest in the biological sciences.Book Details
Published
June 1, 2001
Publisher
New York ; Free Press, 2001.
Pages
336
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780743201612