Evolution's Hidden Force

I was really excited (not) when the January 8th edition of New Scientist arrived. The cover story was bound to be something I could use in my course when we discussed modern views of evolution. Even the title was provocative: Uncertainty principle: How evolution hedges its bets.¹

The article was written by freelance science writer Henry Nicholls. He lives in London UK and he has a Ph.D. (2007) in Evolutionary Ecology. Here's how the article begins ...

A man walks into a bar. "I have a new way of looking at evolution," he announces. "Do you have something I could write it down on?" The barman produces a piece of paper and a pen without so much as a smile. But then, the man wasn't joking.

The man in question is Andrew Feinberg, a leading geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; the bar is The Hung, Drawn and Quartered, a pub within the shadow of the Tower of London; and what's written on the piece of paper could fundamentally alter the way we think about ... evolution ....

Let's turn this into a quiz.

What did Andrew Feinberg write about on that piece of paper?

1. the importance of small RNAs
2. random genetic drift
3. epigenetics
4. species sorting
5. hierarchical theory
6. evo-devo
7. evolvability
8. mutationism
9. developmental constraints
10. contingency
11. alternative splicing
12. selfish DNA
13. the demise of the Central Dogma
14. facilitated variation
15. group selection
16. phenotypic plasticity
17. molecular chaperones
18. genome complexity and the myth of junk DNA
19. horizontal gene transfer
20. the death of trees
21. molecular drive
22. endosymbiosis
23. mass extinctions
24. punctuated equilibria
25. genomics
26. proteomics
27. systems biology
28. the high cost of a beer in London

All of these things have been touted as new ways of looking at evolution. Which one did he choose?

Here's a hint ...

Before setting foot in the pub, Feinberg had taken a turn on the London Eye, climbed Big Ben and wandered into Westminster Abbey. There, as you might expect, he sought out the resting place of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. He was struck by the contrast between the lavish marble sculpture of a youthful Newton, reclining regally beneath a gold-leafed globe, and Darwin's minimalist floor stone.

As he looked round, Feinberg's eyes came to rest on a nearby plaque commemorating physicist Paul Dirac. This set him thinking about quantum theory and evolution, which led him to the idea that ... XXX ... might inject a Heisenberg-like uncertainty into the expression of genes, which would boost the chances of species surviving. That, more or less, is what he wrote on the piece of paper.

Hmmm ... Hung, Drawn and Quartered ... that gives me an idea. Let me write it down ....

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[Photo Credit: Jaunted]

1. Most of you can't follow the link because it's behind a paywall.