Comments on: Book review – The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

By: Book review – Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains: The History of High-Level Biological Classification | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 22:38:00 +0000

[…] including top-level groups that excluded plants and animals. I have previously reviewed books on Carl Woese and the discovery of Archaea that were soon elevated by one level from kingdom to domain. There are […]

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By: Book review – The Evolutionary Origins of Life and Death | The Inquisitive Biologist

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 15:37:39 +0000

[…] but an awful lot of evolution had to happen to get to that point. And much of that took the form of horizontal gene transfer, to the point that I imagine the root of LUCA breaking down into an intractable cloud. Durand […]

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By: Book review – The Curious World of Bacteria | The Inquisitive Biologist

Book review – The Curious World of Bacteria | The Inquisitive Biologist — Wed, 10 May 2023 11:05:34 +0000

[…] of the unusual things bacteria can do. I was pleased to find mention of relevant topics such as horizontal gene transfer (the exchange of genetic material within, rather than between, generations that can readily cross […]

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By: Book review – Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 11:02:37 +0000

[…] on microbiology, primatology, and especially evolutionary biology. Harper’s discussion of horizontal gene transfer, the mind-blowing concept of viral quasispecies, or the relentless nature of evolution shows he has […]

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By: Book review – Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined – and Redefined – Nature | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 09:19:07 +0000

[…] resistance to GMOs and have previously written about the appeal to nature fallacy. For me, horizontal gene transfer is proof positive that nature beat us at the game of transgenics ages ago. Maybe it was not her […]

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By: Book review – On the Origin of Evolution: Tracing ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ from Aristotle to DNA | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 07:46:43 +0000

[…] in Unravelling the Double Helix; and the discovery of how DNA codes for amino acids. It touches on horizontal gene transfer, epigenetics, and twin studies and the discovery of polygenic traits. All important topics for […]

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By: Book review – Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment | The Inquisitive Biologist

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 21:29:33 +0000

[…] really have it in for genetic engineering. Other than completely ignoring the pervasiveness of horizontal gene transfer (one could say nature invented genetic modification billions of years before we did), they are […]

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By: Book review – Virusphere: From Common Colds to Ebola Epidemics: Why We Need the Viruses that Plague Us | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 13 May 2019 08:56:59 +0000

[…] Biologists have typically portrayed viruses as parasites that straddle the border between life and non-life. Ryan goes against that grain, preferring to pull viruses into the domain of the living. Yes, they depend on their hosts for their replication, but virtually all organisms (bar the rare autotrophic bacterium) depend on other living organisms in the web of life. The virus particles that burst out of an infected cell and linger in the environment, waiting for a new host? Ryan likens them to dormant seeds rather than inanimate matter. He ends the book making a case for considering viruses as the fourth domain of life (in addition to the three that Carl Woese defined, see my review of The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life). […]

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By: Book review – Kin: How We Came to Know Our Microbe Relatives | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:05:41 +0000

[…] reading Quammen’s The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life I was already familiar with parts of this story. Even so, there are some notable differences […]

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By: Book review – Lamarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past and Present | The Inquisitive Biologist

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 09:28:31 +0000

[…] large-scale exchange of chunks of DNA by viruses and bacteria is very influential (see my review of The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, and yes, lateral and horizontal gene transfer are two names for the same process). It provides a […]

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