In Praise of Flukes

I have an article in tomorrow’s New York Times on a provocative theory about our origins. Humans, other animals, plants, fungi, and protozoans are all eukaryotes. We all share a distinctive genome compared to other organisms (prokaryotes, which include bacteria and archaea). Our genes are more versatile: they can be switched on an off in more complex patterns than in prokaryotes, and one gene can make many different proteins, depending on which parts of the gene our cells look at. Some scientists would like to say that this distinctiveness must be the product of natural selection. But Michael Lynch, a biologist at Indiana University, is here

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