The Cooperative Gene
Subtitle: How Mendel's Demon Explains the Evolution of Complex Beings
Edition: 1st Free P edition
Publisher: Free Press
Published: June 11, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780743201612
Subjects: Life Sciences - Genetics & Genomics; Science/Mathematics; Life Sciences - Evolution; Genetics +; Organic Evolution; Science; Life Sciences - Evolution - Human; Science / General; Evolution (Biology); Chromosome replication; Evolution; Evolutionary genetics; Human evolution
First sentence: Life as we know it (or as most of us know it) is large and complex.
Description: "Why isn's all life pond-scum? Why are there multimillion-celled, long-lived monsters like us, built from tens of thousands of cooperating genes? Mark Ridley presents a new explanation of how complex large life forms like ourselves came to exist, showing that the answer to the greatest mystery of evolution for modern science is not the selfish gene; it is the cooperative gene.".

"In this thought-provoking book, Ridley breaks down how two major biological hurdles had to be overcome in order to allow living complexity to evolve: the proliferation of genes and gene-selfishness. Because complex life has more genes than simple life, the increase in gene numbers poses a particular problem for complex beings."--BOOK JACKET.