Adaptive Mutations Aren't Dileterious

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Most mutations in the worldlike that we live in now, where species are fairly mat were and have found their niches is going to be bad. But at a time like 66 million years ago, when an asteroid just hit and wiped out a lot, there were a whole bunch of unoccupied niches,. And any other chance to let your experimentation run wild was much greater. So i think you're intuitively right there in terms of sort of things being well tuned. On the other hand, and there is the second part of your question, which i've now forgotten because i ye, an ieti, i have given my alcohol a i nol.

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and how much is in the hands of chance? Today we’re thrilled to have as a guest my evil (but more respectable, by most measures) twin, the biologist Sean B. Carroll. Sean is both a leader of the modern evo-devo revolution, and a wonderful and diverse writer. We talk about the importance of randomness and unpredictability in life, from the evolution of species to the daily routine of every individual.

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Sean B. Carroll received a Ph.D. in immunology from Tufts University. He is currently the Andrew and Mary Balo and Nicholas and Susan Simon Endowed Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland, Vice-President for Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Executive Director of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin. His new book, A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You, explores the role of chance in the development of life.

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