BY KAREN BOSSICK
Learn how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution—and our own human health—when David Quammen presents his latest book at Ketchum’s Community Library.
Quammen, who lives in Bozeman, will discuss “The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18 at Ketchum’s Community Library.
The book focuses on the evolution of research on the horizontal gene transfer—HGT—or the movement of genes across species lines. Quammen points out how studies started in the mid-1970s indicate that 8 percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from ancestors but sideways by viral infection.
Quammen tells the story through the researchers who discovered these things, including Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of HGT.
A contributing writer for National Geographic, Quammen is has been honored with an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The New York Times called him “our greatest living chronicler of the natural world.”
Quammen has also written “The Song of the Dodo,” “Mr. Darwin” and “Spillover.”