The scope and significance of cytoplasmic inheritance has been the subject of one of the longest controversies in the history of genetics. In the first major book on the history of this subject, Jan Sapp analyses the persistent attempts of investigators of non-Mendelian inheritance to establish their claims in the face of strong resistance from nucleo-centric geneticists and classical neo-Darwinians. A new perspective on the history of genetics is offered as he explores the conflicts which have shaped theoretical thinking about heredity and evolution throughout the century: materialism vs....

In this comprehensive history of symbiosis theory--the first to be written--Jan Sapp masterfully traces its development from modest beginnings in the late nineteenth century to its current status as one of the key conceptual frameworks for the life sciences. The symbiotic perspective on evolution, which argues that "higher species" have evolved from a merger of two or more different kinds of organisms living together, is now clearly established with definitive molecular evidence demonstrating that mitochondria and chloroplasts have evolved from symbiotic bacteria. In telling the exciting...

During the late 1960s and 1970s, massive herds of poisonous crown-of-t horns starfish suddenly began to infest coral reef communities around the world, leaving in their wake devastation comparable to a burnt-out rainforest. In What is Natural?, Jan Sapp both examines this ecologic al catastrophe and captures the intense debate among scientists about what caused the crisis, and how it should be handled.

Genesis: The Evolution of Biology presents a history of the past two centuries of biology, suitable for use in courses, but of interest more broadly to evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biomedical scientists, as well as general readers interested in the history of science. The book covers the early evolutionary biologists-Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin and Wallace through Mayr and the neodarwinian synthesis, in much the same way as other histories of evolution have done, bringing in also the social implications, the struggles with our religious understanding, and the interweaving of...

The birth of bacterial genomics since the mid-1990s brought withit several conceptual modifications and wholly new controversies. Working beyond the scope of the neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis, a group of leading microbial evolutionists addresses the following and related issues, often with markedly varied viewpoints:

- Did the eukaryotic nucleus, cytoskeleton and cilia also orginate from symbiosis?
- Do the current scenarios about he origin of mitochondria and plastids require revision?
- What is the extent of lateral gene transfer (between "species") among bacteria?
-...

This absorbing account of a case of suspected fraud involving the tragic career of the molecular biologist Franz Moewus illustrates all that can go wrong in scientific knowledge-making. The author follows Moewus' meteoric flight among the greatest scientists of the twentieth-century, to his denunciation as the perpetrator of one of the most ambitious cases of fraud in the history of science. He discusses the socio-political issues that helped to bring Moewus' work to the center of great scrutiny in the professional biological science community, how the controversy was sustained for decades,...

This absorbing account of a case of suspected fraud involving the tragic career of the molecular biologist Franz Moewus illustrates all that can go wrong in scientific knowledge-making. The author follows Moewus' meteoric flight among the greatest scientists of the twentieth-century, to his denunciation as the perpetrator of one of the most ambitious cases of fraud in the history of science. He discusses the socio-political issues that helped to bring Moewus' work to the center of great scrutiny in the professional biological science community, how the controversy was sustained for decades,...

This is the story of a profound revolution in the way biologists explore life's history, understand its evolutionary processes, and reveal its diversity. It is about life's smallest entities, deepest diversity, and greatest cellular biomass: the microbiosphere. Jan Sapp introduces us to a new field of evolutionary biology and a new brand of molecular evolutionists who descend to the foundations of evolution on Earth to explore the origins of the genetic system and the primary life forms from which all others have emerged. In so doing, he examines-from Lamarck to the present-the means of...

This is the story of a profound revolution in the way biologists explore life's history, understand its evolutionary processes, and reveal its diversity. It is about life's smallest entities, deepest diversity, and greatest cellular biomass: the microbiosphere. Jan Sapp introduces us to a new field of evolutionary biology and a new brand of molecular evolutionists who descend to the foundations of evolution on Earth to explore the origins of the genetic system and the primary life forms from which all others have emerged. In so doing, he examines-from Lamarck to the present-the means of...

During the late 1960s and 1970s, massive herds of poisonous crown-of-thorns starfish suddenly began to infest coral reef communities around the world, leaving in their wake devastation comparable to a burnt-out rainforest. In What is Natural?, Jan Sapp both examines this ecological catastrophe and captures the intense debate among scientists about what caused the crisis, and how it should be handled.
The crown-of-thorns story takes readers on tropical expeditions around the world, and into both marine laboratories and government committees, where scientists rigorously search for...