BOOK REVIEWS TIBS 24 – JUNE 1999

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sexual populations, evolution of geneinteractions and ‘quantitative’ characters,evolutionarily stable behavioralstrategies, and the evolution of sex. Achapter on macroevolution connectsthese short-term processes with the bigpicture of large-scale evolutionarychange. Of particular relevance fornonspecialists are chapters on theevolution of prokaryotes and of theeukaryotic genome. This new editionadds a chapter on the use of phylogenetictrees to reconstruct evolutionary history,which is especially valuable because Iknow of no other book that presents thistopic at such an accessible level.

Evolutionary Genetics is an excellenttextbook for an introductory course inpopulation genetics. In fact, its accessiblestyle and inclusion of molecular issuesmake it much more to my taste than othertexts in the field. However, its greatestvalue might be to active researchers infields such as molecular biology, who willfind this book much more welcoming thanmost textbooks on evolution. In fact, theprototypic example of natural selection,referred to repeatedly throughout thebook, is Spiegelman’s in vitro evolutionexperiments with phage Qb. And the firstpopulation models considered are forasexual microbial populations, such ascultures of yeast or bacteria. In general,the book moves smoothly back and forthbetween molecular-level, organism-leveland population-level phenomena andexplanations.

Here are a few situations in which thisbook will earn its shelf space.

(1) You’ve discovered that induction ofa temperate prophage is controlled partlyby a quorum-sensing signal, and youwonder if this makes any evolutionarysense. See page 189 for a discussion ofthe evolution of lytic and lysogenic lifecycles.

(2) You’re studying mutationsresponsible for a human disease, butnone of the supposedly wild-type allelesyou’ve sequenced agrees with thepreviously published sequence. See pages154–159 for analysis of the spread ofneutral mutations.

(3) Your competitors have produced aphylogenetic tree of the protein that youstudy; they claim that the tree shows thatyour organism acquired its gene byhorizontal transfer from their organism.You ask a phylogenetics expert, whoscoffs that ‘the tree is meaninglessbecause its bootstraps are too weak’. Seepages 304–305 to learn what bootstrapsare and what they mean (and don’tmean).

John Maynard Smith is a master atcutting through jargon and obfuscation,bringing research problems that havefloated into the clouds of abstractionback down to the ground of commonsense. (I can’t resist putting in a plug forhis wonderful The Major Transitions inEvolution, written with Eors Szathmary.)So if you suspect that your work mighthave some evolutionary relevance, butyou’ve never had the time to delveseriously into population genetics ormolecular evolution, take a look at thisbook. It won’t help you get your car fixed,but it might help you supercharge yourresearch.

Reference1 Maynard Smith, J. and Szathmary, E. (1995)

The Major Transitions in Evolution, W. H.Freeman

ROSIE REDFIELD

Dept of Zoology, University of BritishColumbia, 6270 University Boulevard,Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z4.

Gene talk

Evolutionary Genetics, Second Edn

by John Maynard Smith, OxfordUniversity Press, 1998. £19.95 (xiv 1330 pages) ISBN 0 19 850321 1

The most useful textbook I own isintended not for scientists but forapprentice auto mechanics; it explainspractically everything about how carswork in language even a scientist canunderstand. John Maynard Smith’sEvolutionary Genetics (2nd edn) shouldserve a similar role for anyone whoseresearch sometimes leads them into theevolutionary aspects of genetics. Bothtextbooks are aimed at beginners in theirfields, have clear explanations,informative figures and comprehensiveindexes; both describe tools as well astheory; and both give the reader enoughunderstanding to know when an issuedeserves serious attention, and sufficientvocabulary to deal with experts in theirrespective fields.

The preface to the first edition ofEvolutionary Genetics described its goalsas follows.First, it provides a basic grounding in thoseaspects of genetics, both population andmolecular, that are needed to understandthe mechanisms of evolution. Secondly, itdiscusses a range of topics, from theevolution of plasmids and of gene familiesto the evolution of breeding systems, uponwhich current research in evolution ismainly concentrated, and attempts to showhow the basic principles discussed in thefirst part of the book can be applied.

True to this promise, EvolutionaryGenetics delivers chapters on geneticvariation and evolution in asexual and

ReflectionsReflections contains articles that not only consider historical events in biochemistry, but also developments in

molecular biology and genetics, comparing the differences between working in the early days of molecular biologywith the present. We also hope to include articles that reflect the roots of discovery of much of the molecular

information and the techniques used by molecular biologists in the 1990s.

If there is a topic that you think might be a suitable contribution to the Reflections column, please contact:Jan Witkowski, The Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, PO Box 534, Cold Spring Harbor, NY

11724-0534, USA. Tel: 001 516 549 0507Fax: 001 516 549 0672

Email: witkowsk@phage.cshl.org

or

Mary Purton, TiBS, Elsevier Trends Journals, 68 Hills Road, Cambridge, UK CB2 1LA.Tel: 044 1223 315961Fax: 044 1223 464430

Email: tibs@elsevier.co.uk