Evolution: A View from the 21st Century

James A. Shapiro's Evolution: A View from the 21st Century proposes an important new paradigm for understanding biological evolution. Shapiro demonstrates why traditional views of evolution are inadequate to explain the latest evidence, and presents a compelling alternative. His information- and systems-based approach integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and mobile genetic elements, and points toward an emerging synthesis of physical, information, and biological sciences.

James A. Shapiro, Professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is a leading bacterial geneticist, the discoverer of transposable elements in bacteria, and the key researcher involved in first organizing the field of mobile genetic elements. The earliest proponent of “natural genetic engineering” as a basic feature of evolution, he has been a leading scientific critic of orthodox evolutionary theory for 20 years.

Shapiro is co-editor of DNA Insertion Elements, Episomes, and Plasmids (1977, Cold Spring Harbor Press), editor of Mobile Genetic Elements (1983, Academic Press), and co-editor of Bacteria as Multicellular Organisms (1997, Oxford University Press). He holds a Ph.D. in genetics from Cambridge University.