In this New York Times bestseller and longlist nominee for the National Book Award, âour greatest living chronicler of the natural worldâ (The New York Times), David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology affect our understanding of evolution and lifeâs history.
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 fieldâthe study of lifeâs diversity and relatedness at the molecular levelâis horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important; we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived sideways by viral infectionâa type of HGT.
In The Tangled Tree, âthe grandest tale in biologyâŚ.David Quammen presents the scienceâand the scientists involvedâwith patience, candor, and flairâ (Nature). We learn about the major players, such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about âmosaicâ 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.
âDavid Quammen proves to be an immensely well-informed guide to a complex storyâ (The Wall Street Journal). In The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of lifeâincluding where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic compositionâthrough sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. âThe Tangled Tree is a source of wonderâŚ.Quammen has written a deep and daring intellectual adventureâ (The Boston Globe).