The Tangled Tree | 誠品線上

The Tangled Tree

內容簡介

內容簡介 美國國家圖書獎入圍科普書多次獲獎的科普作家大衛．奎曼告訴我們，分子生物的最新發現會改變我們對演化與生命史的理解，甚至對人類的健康與人性產生重大的影響。1970年代中葉，科學家開始利用DNA定序法重新檢視所有的生命史，從這個對生命多樣性以及在分子層面互相關聯的研究中，最令人訝異的發現有可能是基因水平轉移(HGT)，也就是不同物種間的基因移動，這個發現使得HGT的研究被廣泛使用且變得重要。例如，我們現在知道，人類基因體大約有8%並非來自垂直式的遺傳，而是水平式的病毒感染 – 亦即一種HGT的型態。透過本書，我們認識了研究HGT的重要學者，例如：20世紀最重要但卻罕為人知的生物學家卡爾．烏斯(Carl Woese)；被證明為真的”拼貼”生物這個狂野理論的發想者，也是聲名狼藉的獨行俠琳．馬古利斯(Lynn Margulis)；發現利用基因水平移轉而造成全球公衛危機的抗藥性細菌，進而帶來基因體史深度研究的渡邊力。這本關於演化分子生物學的書，讓我們認識生命的糾結之樹，還有人類在這棵樹上的位置。我們得感謝編輯基因的新技術CRISPR，透過對接、插入這些在自然界已經行之許久的方式，讓我們可以改變基因組合。《糾結樹》是一本改變我們對演化、生命史、甚至人性理解的一本精彩指南。Nonpareil science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature.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. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT.In The Tangled Tree David Quammen, “one of that rare breed of science journalists who blends exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling” (Nature), chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them—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.“Quammen is no ordinary writer. He is simply astonishing, one of that rare class of writer gifted with verve, ingenuity, humor, guts, and great heart” (Elle). Now, in The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life—including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies such as CRISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. The Tangled Tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life’s history, and of our own human nature.

作者介紹

作者介紹 David QuammenDavid Quammen’s fifteen books include The Tangled Tree, The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. He has written for Harper’s, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Book Review, Outside, and Powder, among other magazines, and is a contributing writer for National Geographic. He wrote the entire text of the May 2016 issue of National Geographic on the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem—the first time in the history of the magazine that an issue was single-authored. Quammen shares a home in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Betsy Gaines Quammen, an environmental historian, along with two Russian wolfhounds and a cross-eyed cat.

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