Evolution: a View from the 21st Century, by James A. Shapiro

The Modern Synthesis is dead. Evolution doesn’t take place the way we thought it did, the way we make a building out of individual bricks—genetic mutations— added one at a time through the action of natural selection. Instead it happens more the way we build a bridge, out of long sections already fully functional and configured ready to plug into an existing structure and extend it. That's the clear message in Evolution: A View from the 21st Century from one who should know, James A. Shapiro, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, for the last twelve years of her life a confidant of Barbara McClintock. More...