- Author : Mark Ridley
- Binding : Hardcover
- EAN : 9780743201612
- Edition : 1
- ISBN : 0743201612
- Label : Free Press
- List Price : CDN$ 39.50 (CAD)
- Manufacturer : Free Press
- Number Of Pages : 336
- Package Dimensions : 1.10 inches (Height) x 9.30 inches (Length) x 1.25 pounds (Weight) x 6.10 inches (Width)
- Publication Date : 2001-06-11
- Publisher : Free Press
- Studio : Free Press
The Cooperative Gene is about sex and how sex enabled complex life to arise. Mark Ridley, a researcher and author of many works including the textbook Evolution, contends that simple life is "easy." Simple life like bacteria evolved as soon as conditions on Earth permitted. But complex life--walking, flying, swimming, squawking organisms with differentiated tissues--was a huge step forward. It took billions of years for complex life (and sex) to appear. More than anything, organisms want to pass on their genes. Sex seems to defy natural selection in its ability to convince organisms to pass on only half their genes. Natural selection will favor "selfish" genes, ones that can beat the odds and get passed on. But if this happened all the time, complex life could not exist. So how does it? Enter what Ridley describes as "Mendel's demon," a system in which genes are passed on in a random fashion. Most important, the demon prevents selfish genes from sabotaging that randomness. Although Gene isn't a technical book, its ideas are complicated. Ridley's style is methodical, broken by the occasional dryly humorous aside. Evolutionary biologists and other assorted PhDs will no doubt be entertained. Popular-science buffs may find it slow going, but they will be rewarded by a thorough understanding of the topic. In his last two chapters, Ridley leaps further afield, exploring the influence of technology on human evolution and speculating how future science could change us. He also examines the idea of supercomplex organisms, beings that would tower over humans in complexity to the same degree that humans tower over bacteria. It's pure speculation but compelling nonetheless, worthy of its own book. --J. B. Peck
- From Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
Customers rated The Cooperative Gene: How Mendel's Demon Explains the Evolution of Complex Beings 4.5 stars out of 5.0 based on 10 reviews:Excellent Book - Bizarre title change
by - 2003-10-03
This is another great and endlessly enjoyable work by Mark Ridley.Just to eliminate any confusion, I want to reiterate what an earlier reviewer pointed out; the title of this book is "Mendel's Demon: Gene Justice and the Complexity of Life". The American edition of the book was published with an altered title, creating the absurd impression that this book is somehow a challenge to the landmark work "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Some misleading reviews printed here reflect that this silliness actualy worked as a marketing tool aimed at simpletons.Mark Ridley was an undergraduate student of Richard Dawkins at the University of Oxford and is now a colleague of his there. Throughout Dawkins' work (ie. the preface to "The Extended Phenotype") he has lauded Ridley's brilliance, and he did so again in his review of this book.Anyone who is confused by the name change (a routine by American publishers that plays havoc with citations) ought not to be confused about the book's implied content; it is a fascinating read about fascinating topics, not a "challenge" to something that Mark Ridley hasn't the faintest desire to attack.Better than Dawkins
by M. Cyzio (Alpharetta, GA USA) - 2003-04-27
Read "Selfish Gene"? You have to read this book!The Cooperative Gene
by Joe Zika (Cincinnati, Ohio) - 2002-11-18
The Cooperative Gene: How Mendel's Demon Explains the Evolution of Complex Beings written by Mark Ridley who is one of today's leading evolutionary thinkers. This is a well-written book that brings to the reader an intellectual treat."The Cooperative Gene" give us clues as to why and how complex life came about. It was by natural selection by ingenious solutions to copying errors and uncooperative genes. The author explains everything in a distinctive style that is very cleve... indeed.This book is geerd to a person with a scientic background as it delves into biology, biochemistry, and cell biology, but it isn't out of reach of a well read lay person. The author's wit and intelligence comes through and he seems to get the reader involved so you're not lost. I was pleasantly intrigued by the author's historical grounding of this book and the up to date relevance. From the initial wobbly, replicating molecules, through microbes, worms and flies till we get to mankind, the author reveals how life evolved on earth.Natural selection encouragess genes that look out for themselves, while delfish genes that could easily evolve to sabotage the development of complex life forms. Ther author painstakenly explains the difference between a selfish and a cooperative gene. As well as giving the reader his definition of Gregor Mendel's fundamental laws of inheritance... Mendel's Demon, thus, we find out about the origins of sex, gender, and cloning.The DNA in a human being is 6600 Million letters long and codes for about thirty thousand genes. In contrast, the DNA of a bacterium is two or three million letters long and codes for two or three thousand genes. You see where coding for a human being can bring on more mistakes. Mendelian inheritance controls how genes are inherited in complex life. It combines sex, reproduction, and the probabilistic rather than certain inheritance of genes.All in all, this book was rather captivating to me, the narrative wasn't overbearing and it easily readable, but you have to have a scientific origin to get the most out this book."When the tiger comes, freeze . . ."
by Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - 2002-04-01
Our view of life is usually pretty limited. Seeing trees, the family dog, winging birds, ourselves, we forget, if we ever knew, that complex life forms are in the historical and numerical minority. Even after 3 thousand million years, single-celled animals have the longest duration and largest population. Globs of material with a string of molecules, which we call "bacteria" were and are the most common form of life. Mark Ridley traces how those simple creatures underwent a radical change. They became restructured in a revolutionary step that would enable highly complex life to exist and evolve. Part of that revolution was the development of the most absurd concept in life's long history - sex. Gregor Mendel investigated the passing on of traits by counting peas. Ridley introduces an avatar, "Mendel's Demon" to explain how sex regulates what is passed on in us.In this superbly written account, Ridley clearly explains the advantage sex has in the evolution of life. He uses the children's game of Chinese Whispers [called Gossip in my childhood] to explain how evolution operates. In Gossip [forgive the chauvinism], a group of children whisper a message from one to another. Record the original message "when the tiger comes, freeze." Compare it with the version expressed by the final child. There will certainly be changes. In almost all occurrences, the errors are in misunderstood whole words, not just letters - "freeze" becomes "wheeze." The "words" of life are our genes. Acting as instructions to forming a new individual, the message must be clear enough to build the organism. That organism must survive to produce another. Sex provides ways of assessing the message to assure its validity before generating an offspring. Ridley goes on to discuss how complex life forms emerged. The most important steps were the protecting of DNA in a cell nucleus and the addition of mitochondria. Mitochondria are the energy modules of cells - chloroplasts in plants probably being the best known. Their joining the nuclear cell provided a trade-off. Mitochondria were given a place to live, paying rent by transferring much of their DNA to the cell's nuclear version. Once these two changes had been achieved, sex evolved with mechanisms to overcome the problems of DNA playing Gossip. Ridley shows how the processes surrounding sex overcome the mistakes that inevitably occur in the copying process. Gross errors don't survive - indeed they rarely achieve the development level of a fetus. The apparent dichotomy here is that while reducing errors may mean conserving an organism's traits, it may also reduce the diversity necessary to survive in a changing environment. The balance is delicate, as the fact that 99.9 per cent of all species having gone extinct over time testifies.Ridley sensibly brings each detailed description of the cell's processes back to how it relates to humans. This ploy is highly successful in making the book readable and focussed. It also builds a framework for the concluding chapters. After his thorough analysis of the procedures of reproduction and evolution, Ridley goes on to some highly speculative notions about the future. He notes that our species carries more genetic errors across generations than any other species. Could this error rate lead to what he calls "mutational meltdown"? Possibly, but not likely. Having speculated on conditions of life on alien worlds, he uses those ideas to suggest future scenarios to prevent that "meltdown." That bugaboo of today's society, cloning, Ridley dismisses as too vulnerable to natural selection. Instead, he sees gradually improving methods in using genes for therapy, organ replacement or repair, possibly even a drastic change in gender identity.Ridley's almost anecdotal style makes this overview of a complex topic an absorbing read. Reaching from deep history to a plausible future he covers much ground. His imagery retains your attention and he carefully builds your knowledge as you follow his lead. He's also careful with his science. No assertions are put forward without good foundation, and where the evidence is lacking or slim, he cautions us about coming to conclusions. The balance is so carefully maintained that this book might be considered a call for research in particular areas. Formidable and challenging, this is a delightful book for countless reasons. Intriguing questions, bold but realistic speculation, sound science vividly presented. A rich treasure, this book will be valuable until all Ridley's questions are resolved.Note to those who have found the title a problem, be aware that this book was originally published as: Mendel's Demon: Gene Justice and the Complexity of Life. Why the title was revised for U.S. publication remains elusive.A zippier title: Genetic Meltdown in the Human Species
by Jon Claerbout (Stanford, CA United States) - 2002-01-22
We are "complex life".Is our complexity limited by the rate of DNA copying error?Simple life reproduces and evolves much faster than complex life.Time measured by physics and fossils versus time measured by DNA changes.Life existed 3500 mya (million years before present)but fossils only go back a mere 550 mya.It took a long time for complex life to evolve.Live complexity hits its ceiling when the DNA messageis so long that a mistake happens every time it is copied.For each organism, the important issue is that one or more of itsmany offspring must be correctly copied.Human beings seem to make about 200 copying mistakes in each child!Most of this error is irrelevant (in junk DNA?).The harmful mutation rate per generation is about 2-20.Shocking! We are in the paradoxical zone.RNA is more fragile. Because of their copy error rates,RNA viruses could not evolve to be much bigger than they already are.Bacteria use DNA as we do so they can be much bigger.Base C is the main culprit; it tends to mutate to base U.Mukai's experiment. Kondrashev's theory.Is the paradox explained by sex?Sexual selection tends to group good genes with good and bad with bad.[Only good with good survive? (under prehistoric conditions)].This was the place to mention the genetic advantages of female infidelitybut he didn't.Complex life is at odds with internal gene competition.Here, I the reviewer am not convinced of one of the author's major claims,"The deep nature of maleness is to eject organelles from reproductive cells;the deep nature of femaleness is to keep them."I recall the "neutral theory" of evolution,that many genetic changes make no difference to fitness.It's like the "null space" in algebra.A wide variety of models may have equal fitness.He hasn't convinced me that organelle competition is destructive.Page 184 explains the double division in meiosis asa mechanism for limiting gene competition.I don't understand this point yet butI intend to return to the book many times in the future until I do.The books ends with a chapter on The Human Condition and one on A Complex Future.Although he enjoys a tongue-in-cheek discussion of sex of angels,the book does not focus as sharply as it should on the fearsome questionthat it should: How fast will our species will decline if weare all good citizens and have our alloted 2.3 children?
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