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Good Reads  Organismal to Molecular Biology  Genetics & Genomics

Lamarck's Revenge How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution's Past and Present

Popular Science
By: Peter Ward(Author)
274 pages, no illustrations
Lamarck's Revenge
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  • Lamarck's Revenge ISBN: 9781632866158 Hardback Oct 2018 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 1-2 weeks
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About this book

Epigenetics upends natural selection and genetic mutation as the sole engines of evolution, and offers startling insights into our future heritable traits.

In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first described epigenetics to explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics; however, his theory was supplanted in the 1800s by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through heritable genetic mutations. But natural selection could not adequately explain how rapidly species re-diversified and repopulated after mass extinctions. Now advances in the study of DNA and RNA have resurrected epigenetics, which can create radical physical and physiological changes in subsequent generations by the simple addition of a single small molecule, thus passing along a propensity for molecules to attach in the same places in the next generation.

Epigenetics is a complex process, but palaeontologist and astrobiologist Peter Ward breaks it down for general readers, using the epigenetic paradigm to reexamine how the history of our species – from deep time to the outbreak of the Black Plague and into the present – has left its mark on our physiology, behaviour, and intelligence. Most alarming are chapters about epigenetic changes we are undergoing now triggered by toxins, environmental pollutants, famine, poor nutrition, and overexposure to violence.

Lamarck's Revenge is an eye-opening and controversial exploration of how traits are inherited, and how outside influences drive what we pass along to our progeny.

Customer Reviews (1)

  • A hit-and-miss affair
    By Leon (NHBS Catalogue Editor) 8 Jan 2019 Written for Hardback


    As one of several intellectuals who wrote about evolution before Darwin, time has not been kind to the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). Reviled during his lifetime by the influential Cuvier, after his death he became best remembered, and ultimately ridiculed, for the idea that characters acquired during an organism's lifetime are passed on to its offspring. With the rise of the modern field of epigenetics, some of his ideas are making a comeback, albeit modified and adapted for the 21st Century. Palaeontologist and astrobiologist Peter Ward would even like to go so far as to restore some honour to his name and consider epigenetics a neo-Lamarckian process.

    Lamarck's Revenge starts with a useful intellectual history that drives home the point that the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin were very much a product of what was intellectually fashionable at the time, and what was still unknown. So, while Darwin was heavily influenced by Lyell's idea of uniformitarianism (introduced in my review of Cataclysms) and Malthus's ideas on overpopulation (see my review of his An Essay on the Principle of Population), the discovery of genetics and DNA were still many decades away. But once these had been made, they eclipsed Lamarck's idea of the inheritance of acquired characters. Until, some now argue, epigenetics came into the picture.

    Epigenetics is the study of changes in an organism caused by changes in gene expression rather than in the genetic code itself. So, up- or down-regulation of gene activity rather than mutations. These epigenetic changes are apparently heritable, though I was left with many questions as to how. Some explanation is offered for methylation but it is unclear whether we don't know about the rest, or whether Ward assumes this known on the part of the reader. He mentions Carey's The Epigenetics Revolution as a landmark book summarizing basic processes from a chemical and biological viewpoint.

    Having introduced epigenetics, the rest of the book addresses a variety of topics, trying to argue the importance of epigenetic inheritance for each of these. It is ironic that Ward, having just lamented that there is so much confused usage of the term epigenetics, and having established that this process by definition leaves the DNA sequence unchanged, then goes and immediately muddles the waters. He examines the origin of life and the blossoming of life after mass extinctions through an epigenetic lens by invoking lateral gene transfer. Err, that's not epigenetics.

    Now, don't get me wrong: this large-scale exchange of chunks of DNA by viruses and bacteria is very influential (see my review of The Tangled Tree, and yes, lateral and horizontal gene transfer are two names for the same process). It provides a good mechanism for Stephen Jay Gould's idea of punctuated equilibrium, the idea that evolution consists of long periods of relative stasis, punctuated by short bursts of rapid change (see Punctuated Equilibrium). And it could very well have been a driver of the rapid diversification of life after mass extinctions such as the Cambrian Explosion (see The Cambrian Explosion). Ward tries to defend his choice by saying that it is not the slow-and-steady process of random mutation that Darwin proposed, therefore it is Lamarckian, therefore epigenetic. That is presenting a strict, almost caricatured interpretation of Darwin's ideas that few evolutionary biologists still adhere to nowadays (see for example Extended Heredity). More importantly, this is macro-mutation, plain and simple. It is a wholesale change to a DNA sequence, and therefore by definition not epigenetic.

    Ward repeats this in his final chapter on the gene-editing technology CRISPR (see also my reviews of A Crack in Creation and Modern Prometheus). He seems intent on scaring readers with bleak scenarios of human supersoldiers and parallels to the horrors of the atomic bomb that followed the discovery of nuclear fission. Meanwhile, he ignores that, for all of CRISPR's power and utility, many human traits are complex and polygenic (influenced by numerous genes of small effect, see for example my review of Blueprint), which makes them little accessible to CRISPR editing. And again, since CRISPR allows direct alteration of the genetic code it is by definition not epigenetic.

    Is this just semantics? I think not. In what is supposed to be a popular science book on epigenetics this will escape the attention of many readers and leave them with the wrong ideas. Ward also misses the truly interesting bits. He briefly mentions that we have recovered signs of methylation on ancient DNA (i.e. DNA recovered from archaeological remains). Now that is revolutionary! And his idea that epigenetics coexists with classic Darwinian selection – the former operating in times of upheaval when rapid adaptation is called for, the latter in times of relative peace when mutation proceeds steadily – is attractive. It could do much to solve the conundrum of “missing links” and the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, a favourite argument of creationists. Maybe the fossil record isn't so incomplete after all.

    The remaining chapters invoke the idea that all sorts of stresses could have played, or are playing, a role in human evolution by inducing epigenetic changes through DNA methylation. Ward poses many interesting questions. What was the epigenetic impact of experiencing the stresses of war or pandemics, or the loss of loved ones to these? What of the epigenetic impact of chemical signals released by the gut's microbiome during periods of famine? And what of our current exposure to toxic chemicals, many of which are evolutionary completely novel? Ward here mixes research with assertion in short sections that often feel like they could have been further developed, and seems keen to quickly conclude that epigenetics must be important. His citing of both primary research and secondary sources such as blogs, TED talks or news reports seems questionable and sometimes unnecessary. Why cite news items instead of the paper being reported on?

    Those familiar with epigenetics will appreciate some of the flashes of insight in this book, but the limited explanation of how epigenetic inheritance actually works, the confusion caused by prominently including non-epigenetic mechanisms, and the firm assertions when so much research is still in its infancy make it hard to recommend this book to novice readers. As my first entry into this topic I found it to be a hit-and-miss affair and will search out Carey's book next.
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Biography

Peter Ward, Ph.D. is a palaeontologist and astrobiologist whose most recent book is A New History of Life, with coauthor Joe Kirschvink. Ward's Rare Earth, coauthored with Don Brownlee, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the ten most important science books of 2001 and his Gorgon was awarded a Washington State Governor's Book Award in 2005. He has appeared often on the Art Bell Coast to Coast radio program and on Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Ward lives in Washington State.

Popular Science
By: Peter Ward(Author)
274 pages, no illustrations
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