Campbell, Evolution And Origin of Cells (biology Collection) Author

An Outline of a Fundamentally New Evolutionary Synthesis Reflecting Key Advances in Genomics, Systems Biology, and Biological Physics
In this ambitious book, Eugene V. Koonin illuminates the gamut of randomness and regularity that is at the heart of life.

Pointing the way beyond Modern Synthesis, Koonin brings together new data and concepts in an attempt to achieve a far deeper understanding of the interplay between chance and necessity that drives biological evolution. He explains evolution as a stochastic process based on historical contingency, constrained by requirements for maintaining cell organization and modulated by adaptation.

The field of cell biology is built on a foundation of discoveries stretching back to the earliest descriptions of cell theory in the 1800s. Today, our growing insight into cells and their control of life functions continues to generate advances in areas such as medicine, agriculture, genetics, and reproduction. This book traces the rise of cell biology and explains biological concepts through easy-to-follow text. Sidebars provide biographies of key scientists and descriptions of the evolution of microscopes and other significant technologies. Readers travel deep inside the cell, following the path of scientists as they unlock its mysteries.

Darwin's Harvest addresses concerns that we are losing the diversity of crop plants that provide food for most of the world. With contributions from evolutionary biologists, geneticists, agronomists, molecular biologists, and anthropologists, this collection discusses how economic development, loss of heirloom varieties and wild ancestors, and modern agricultural techniques have endangered the genetic diversity needed to keep agricultural crops vital and capable of adaptation.