Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle (47 page)

sucrase enzyme, 62–63

systems biology, 162, 218–19

Szostak, Jack, 57, 58, 118

technological innovation

access to nature’s libraries, 69–70, 117, 220–21

adaptation of old technologies for new uses, 199–200

Boolean logic functions and logic gates, 207–15

complexity and simplicity, 215–16

design for changing environments, 189

digital circuit networks, 212–15

evolutionary algorithms mirroring biological evolution, 202–4

exaptation, 200

failures and attachment to wrong ideas, 196–97

ingenuity, 204–5

machine learning, 211–12

modular robots, 195, 210–11

multiple origins of inventions and solutions to problems, 198–99

new combinations of old technologies, 200–201

parallels with biological innovation, 196–202, 212–16

populations of innovators, 197–98

standards, 205–7

trial and error, 196, 198

Tegmark, Max, 220

teleosts, 74

texts, genotype.
See
genotype networks

tidal pool theory of life’s origin, 49

toxins, microbial metabolization of, 72–74

transcriptional regulators, 138–40

traveling salesman problem, 202–3

truth tables, 208–9

Tsiantis, Miltos, 156

Unger, Franz, 8

universal library concept, 67–69, 87–89

universal standards, 63–65, 204–5, 215–16

uracil, 59

van Helmont, Jan Baptista, 36

van Leeuwenhoek, Antonie, 37

Venter, Craig, 29–30

vesicles, 55–57

viruses, 42, 79, 119

vitalism, 22

volcanoes, underwater, 49–51

Vrba, Elizabeth, 200

Waddington, C. H., 171

Wagner, Andreas, and research team

comparison of phenotypes among bacterial organisms, 81–83

on complexity and robustness, 193

on diversity of genotype neighborhoods, 103–5

laboratory evolution study on RNA ribozyme, 132–35

laboratory facilities and research goal, 5, 95–97

on metabolic genotype networks, 97–101

on organization of digital circuit libraries, 212–15

on regulation circuits, 158, 162–66

warm ponds/primordial soup hypothesis of life’s origins, 39–40, 48–49

Watson, James, 24, 43

Whitehead, Alfred North, 9

Wigner, Eugene, 220

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 220

Wright, Sewall, 18, 218

YaMoR (Yet another Modular Robot), 195, 210–11

yeasts

fermentation by, 22

gene duplications and robustness, 171–73, 189

regulation circuits, 166–67

young earth creationism, 8–9