Re: molecular drive

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 13 2000 - 12:04:02 MDT


On Thursday, April 13, 2000 6:48 AM Damien Broderick
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
> To my surprise, since I thought I had a rough and ready sense of these
> things, I find what looks like a fresh and challenging idea in
evolutionary
> theory (a mere 18 years after it was proposed). This is adoptation, the
> outcome of molecular drive, explained by Gabriel Dover, prof of genetics
at
> Leicester in the UK, in his new book DEAR MR DARWIN (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson,
> 2000).

I first read about molecular drive in the early 1990s. Brooks and Wiley
covered it in their 1988 book, _Evolution as Entropy_, which I highly
recommend to all people on this list. The title alone should at least grab
attention. (I've mentioned it here before, but no one really has reacted in
a visible way.)

Somewhere in my nonvirtual files, I also have some technical articles on the
subject. So, the notion has not been completely ignored. Sadly, though,
popular coverage of evolutionary theory hardly gets past Darwinism.
Typically, evolutionary theory for the lay is put into terms of "Darwin vs.
Creationism." Surely, there is some consideration of punctuated equilibria
and Kimura's Theory of Neutral Selection, but that is usually it.

cheers!

Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/



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