Logic of Chance : The nature and origin of biological evolution

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. To support his argument, he weaves together multiple conceptual threads: genomic comparisons that illuminate ancestral forms; new insights into pattern, process, and contingency in evolution; advances in the study of gene expression, protein abundance, and other phenotypic molecular characteristics; application of statistical physics to the study of the evolution of genes and genomes; and new perspectives on probability now emerging from modern cosmology.   The Logic of Chance shows why these insights make the twentieth-century scientific consensus about evolution appear outdated and incomplete and outlines a fundamentally new approach: one that is challenging, sometimes controversial, and always firmly rooted in hard science. Coverage includes Understanding the forces and patterns of evolutionSurprising evolutionary reconstructions arising from the comparison of complete genomesIs there a tree of life--or a forest?How complex eukaryotes arose: tantalizing hints about one of evolutionary biologys key enigmasBiological complexity and entropy: evolutionary lessons from Kolmogorov, Shannon, and BoltzmannRobustness, evolvability, and the creative role of noise in evolutionThe Last Universal Common Ancestor, cell origins, and the primordial gene poolThe key role of viruses and the virus-cell arms race in evolutionLifes origin: estimating the probability of unique events in the context of modern cosmology