検索キーワード： 進化・遺伝学

How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.

In Survival of the Prettiest, Nancy Etcoff, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a practicing psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, argues that beauty is neither a cultural construction, an invention of the fashion industry, nor a backlash against feminism - it's in our biology.    

First published in 1871, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex sees Darwin apply his evolutionary theory to the human race, controversially placing apes in our family tree. The book covers a range of adjacent themes, including differences between different peoples, the dominance of women in mate choice, and the relevance of evolutionary theory to general society.

Evolution is one of the most important processes in life. It not only explains the detailed history of life on earth, but its scope also extends into many aspects of our own contemporary behavior - who we are and how we got to be here, our psychology, our cultures - and greatly impacts modern advancements in medicine and conservation biology. Perhaps its most important claim for science is its ability to provide an overarching framework that integrates the many life sciences into a single unified whole. Yet, evolution has been, and continues to be, regarded with suspicion by many.

 Brains Through Time examines how vertebrate nervous systems evolved in conjunction with other organ systems and the planet's ecology. Surveying an enormous range of information on genes and proteins, sensory and motor systems, central neural circuits, physiology, and animal behavior, the authors reconstruct the major changes that occurred as vertebrates emerged and then diversified. 

In this eye-opening work, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of an inner being led to empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial consciousness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary future.

The study of human evolution is advancing rapidly. Newly discovered fossil evidence is adding ever more pieces to the puzzle of our past, while revolutionary technological advances in the study of ancient DNA are completely reshaping theories of early human populations and migrations. In this Very Short Introduction, Bernard Wood traces the history of paleoanthropology from its beginnings in the 18th century to the very latest fossil finds.

Astrobiology is an exciting new subject, and one, arguably, more interdisciplinary than any other. Astrobiologists seek to understand the origin and evolution of life on Earth in order to illuminate and guide the search for life on other planets. In this Very Short Introduction, David C. Catling introduces the subject through our understanding of the factors that allowed life to arise and persist on our own planet, and for the signs we are looking for in the search for extraterrestrial life. 

Locked inside the DNA of every species that ever lived are endless stories - about origins, ancestors, fate, and much more. Until recently, these secrets were completely inaccessible. But with the help of new technologies, scientists are now reading the hidden history of DNA, making remarkable discoveries about ourselves and our fellow species. Your gateway to this treasure trove of information is Unlocking the Hidden History of DNA, 12 informative and accessible lectures delivered by New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean.

Among the estimated 100 billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere.

The DNA Restart, by world-renowned neurogeneticist and New York Times best-selling author Dr. Sharon Moalem, walks you through revolutionary steps to a diet and lifestyle perfect for your individual genetic makeup. The DNA Restart plan utilizes decades of in-depth scientific research into genetics, epigenetics, nutrition, and longevity to explain the pivotal role genes play in the journey to ideal weight and health status.

When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked, for the historical processes that created life also created cancer. The Cheating Cell delves into this extraordinary relationship, and shows that by understanding cancer’s evolutionary origins, researchers can come up with more effective, revolutionary treatments.

Fifty thousand years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements.

The New York Times bestselling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology. Beginning in the late 19th century, many intellectuals began to insist that scientific knowledge conflicts...

Where has our planet come from, and what lies beneath its surface? How have we come to understand its past and present environments, and what does its future look like? Thanks to scientists who study its rocks, fossils, and landscapes, we know that Earth history spans over four and a half billion years. But there is still much more to discover.

Imagine a future where we grow houses rather than build them. Where smartphones are living, clothing has opinions, and all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA. A world where disease is a thing of the past, and the human lifespan is dramatically extended. To achieve this, says Adrian Woolfson – founder of the genome writing company Genyro – we must transform biology into a predictive, programmable engineering material. That means decoding the generative grammar of DNA: the language of life itself. We will then be able to author genomes – and, if we choose, even rewrite our own.

Few people know much about stem cell research beyond the ethical questions raised by using embryos. But in the last decade, stem cell research has made huge advances toward eliminating some of our most intractable diseases. Now this sweeping and accessible book introduces us to this cutting-edge science, which will revolutionize medicine and change the way we think about and treat disease.

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being "animal" and started being "human". In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion.

Where does DNA come from? What is consciousness? How did the eye evolve? Drawing on a treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, Nick Lane expertly reconstructs evolution's history by describing its 10 greatest inventions - from sex and warmth to death - resulting in a stunning account of nature's ingenuity.

In the aftermath of an asteroid impact, Earth’s power grid is damaged nearly beyond recovery. The survival of our world may well depend on energy sources collected from an abandoned undersea settlement beneath the icy surface of Enceladus. Earth-raised Colonel Carter Rhodes, in charge of Earth’s recovery efforts, calls upon Gwen Baré, a Venusian engineer, to regain control of the deserted moon outpost and collect fuel for Earth’s collapsing power grids.