検索キーワード： 進化・遺伝学

Why is the genome of a salamander 40 times larger than that of a human? Why does the avocado tree produce a million flowers and only a hundred fruits? Why, in short, is there so much waste in nature? In this lively and wide-ranging meditation on the curious accidents and unexpected detours on the path of life, Daniel Milo argues that we ask these questions because we’ve embraced a faulty conception of how evolution - and human society - really works.

Does human life have any meaning? Does the question even make sense today? For centuries, the question of the meaning or purpose of human life was assumed by scholars and theologians to have a religious answer: Life has meaning because humans were made in the image of a good god. In the 19th century, however, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution changed everything - and the human organism was seen to be more machine than spirit.

A New York Times-bestselling author explains how the physical world shaped the history of our species When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes...

Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity.

A practical, helpful guide on how to fight back against Alzheimer’s disease—with expert medical advice and one woman’s inspiring personal journey. Jamie Tyrone was forty-nine years old when she learned by accident through genetic testing that she had a 91% chance of getting Alzheimer's...

This guide will show you how to take your health into your own hands. You will no longer sit on the sidelines - instead you can play an active and empowered role in the state of your own health. This book will help you: understand how the environment and your genes interact; learn how to use your own genetic information to your advantage; create an actionable plan based on your genomics to radically transform your health and improve your vitality; and discover how to improve your health span and lead a productive, happy, and healthy life.

From leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist Jamie Metzl comes a groundbreaking exploration of the many ways genetic engineering is shaking the core foundations of our lives-sex, war, love, and death. At the dawn of the genetics revolution, our DNA is becoming as readable, writable, and hackable as our information technology. But as humanity starts retooling our own genetic code, the choices we make today will be the difference between realizing breathtaking advances in human well-being and descending into a dangerous and potentially deadly genetic arms race.

The epic story and ultimate big history of how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into the sprawling civilizations of a world-dominating species If a chimpanzee ventures into the territory of a different group, it will almost certainly be killed. But a New Yorker can fly to...

Adam = Alien is a groundbreaking book, exploring possible evidence of our extraterrestrial origins. In the vein of Erich Von Däniken, Lloyd Pye, and Zecharia Sitchin, it explores human origin, UFOs, pyramids, religion, science, and our culture's and government's suppression of its proof. It is written by a former skeptic whose research has concluded that most of what he has learned regarding the subject matter above was completely wrong. This book is a wake-up call to you - the open-minded, inquisitive thinker.

Alla luce delle ricerche più recenti, l'audiolibro introduce i fondamenti della teoria evoluzionistica - formulata da Charles Darwin più di un secolo e mezzo fa - al cui centro stanno tre spinte concomitanti: le sorgenti di variazione, la trasmissibilità di una parte di questa variazione di generazione in generazione, l'azione della selezione naturale nei mutevoli contesti ecologici. Ripercorre poi gli altri meccanismi che oggi integrano ed estendono il nucleo darwiniano della teoria, fino alla comparsa di Homo sapiens, un ramoscello nel ricco "cespuglio" degli ominini.

When you think of evolution, the picture that most likely comes to mind is a straight-forward progression, the iconic illustration of a primate morphing into a proud, upright human being. But in reality, random events have played huge roles in determining the evolutionary histories of everything from lions to lobsters to humans. However, random genetic novelties are most likely to become fixed in small populations. It is mathematically unlikely that this will happen in large ones.

The author of Seven Daughters of Eve returns with a lively account of how all dogs are descended from a mere handful of wolves.

Friedemann Schrenk, Professor für Paläobiologie der Wirbeltiere an der Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main und Leiter der Abteilung Paläoanthropologie am Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg erzählt: "Die Arbeit des Paläoanthropologen", "Ein Schlüsselerlebnis", "Situation in Deutschland", "Ein anderes Verständnis", "Mehr Forscher als Funde", "Fundstellen", "Altersbestimmung", "Identifizierung", "Konstruktion und Umwelt", "Zeitdimensionen", "Anfänge der modernen Paläoanthropologie", "Immer ältere Funde", "Beginn der kulturellen Evolution", "Der aufrechte Gang".

Der große Entwicklungsbiologe und Genetiker Walter Jakob Gehring (1939-2014) erzählt: "Das Wunder der Metamorphose". "Schmetterlinge auf dem Estrich", "Drosophila melanogaster: Ein kurzer Blick in die Geschichte", "Entdeckung der Gene: Gregor Mendel", "Die Natur der Gene: Friedrich Miescher", "Der genetische Code: Homeotische Mutationen", "Nasobemia und Antennapedia", "Exkurs: Transdetermination", "Walking along the chromosome", "Homeobox", "Ein Molch mit Froschmund", "Die Bedeutung der Gene für die Entwicklung", "Das Basteln der Evolution: Entwicklung und Evolution der Augen".

Over the past 100 years, gulls have been brought ashore by modernity. They now live not only on the coasts, but in our slipstream following trawlers, barges, and garbage trucks. They are more our contemporaries than most birds, living their wild lives among us in towns and cities. In many ways, they live as we do, walking the built-up world and grabbing a bite where they can. Yet this disturbs us. We’ve started fearing gulls for getting good at being among us. We see them as scavengers, not entrepreneurs; oceangoing aliens, not refugees.

This Very Short Introduction uncovers the history of our understanding of sexual selection, from Darwin's key insights to the modern day. Considering the investment animals place on reproduction, variation in mating systems, sexual conflict, and the origin of sexual dimorphism, authors Marlene Zuk and Leigh Simmons discuss questions such as whether females can really choose between males on aesthetic grounds and how sexual conflict is resolved in different species.

In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence of unbridled industrialism.

Author David Deamer addresses questions that are the cutting edge of research on the origin of life. In Assembling Life, he provides an overview of conditions on the early Earth four billion years ago and explains why freshwater hot springs are a plausible alternative to salty seawater as a site where life can begin.

“A provocative and entertaining magical mineral tour through the life and afterlife of bone.” —Wall Street Journal Our bones have many stories to tell, if you know how to listen. Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over more than four hundred million...

Imagine a world without bees, butterflies, and flowering plants. That was Earth 125 million years ago. Turn back the clock 400 million years, and there were no trees. At 450 million years in the past, even the earliest insects had not yet developed. And looking back 500 million years, the land was devoid of life, which at that time flourished in a profusion of strange forms in the oceans. These and other major turning points are the amazing story of evolution.