Preface: Why Stories?Part I: The Process of ScienceHow the scientific process works, and what can happen when it is undermined.Chapter 1: Guts and Glory Robin Warren's and Barry Marshall's revolutionary discovery and unorthodox demonstration that H. pylori is the cause of ulcers.Chapter 2: First Do No HarmDo vaccines cause autism? The story of the physician who raised the alarm about a link between vaccination and autism, and then how that claim has been tested and affected vaccination rates across the world.Part II: HeredityHow does like produce like? The stories of three seminal discoveries that revealed the physical basis of heredity, and the strides being made today to correct human disorders with gene therapy.Chapter 3: Like Beads on a NecklaceWhere does genetic information reside? The story of T.H. Morgan and collaborators' experiments in fruit flies that proved the chromosomal basis of heredity.
Chapter 4: Who Would Have Guessed it?Frederick Griffith and Oswald Avery's experiments in bacteria that culminated in the key evidence that DNA is the chemical basis of heredity. Chapter 5: The Secret of LifeJames Watson and Francis Crick'sbold and ultimately successful quest to solve the structure of DNA that revealed how genetic information could be faithfully replicated from generation to generation, and evolve by mutation.Chapter 6: Genes as MedicineThe story of Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire's quest to correct blindness with gene therapy.Part III: Evolution and the Origins of Biological DiversityEvolution is said to be the biggest idea humans ever conceived. This section presents the stories of several pioneers who first illuminated key chapters in the story of life, and the origins of species, cells, animals, and humans.Chapter 7: Great Minds Think AlikeThe epic journeys of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, and the similar patterns of observations that lead them to independently propose the theory of evolution by natural selection.Chapter 8: An Explosion of AnimalsWhen and why did animal life first flourish? Charles Walcott's discovery of a huge deposit of fossils in the Canadian Rockies that document the so-called "Cambrian Explosion" of animal life over 500 million years ago.Chapter 9: Evolution by MergerHow did complex eukaryotic cells evolve? The story of the radical theory championed by Lynn Margulis that eukaryotic organelles arose from symbiotic bacteria.
Chapter 10: A Third Form of LifeThe stunning discovery by Carl Woese and colleagues of the Archaea, an entire domain of life that was overlooked by biologists for decades.Chapter 11: Queen of the Stone Age The adventures of Mary and Louis Leakey, whose discoveries of early hominids at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania demonstrated that Africa is the cradle of humanity.Chapter 12: A Little Bit of Neanderthal in Many of UsThe stunning discovery by Svante Pääbo and colleagues that many people retain a trace of Neanderthal ancestry in their DNA.Part IV: EcologyHow does nature work? This section features some of the first experimental approaches to ecology that revealed surprising truths about the factors that shape ecosystems and the environment, and that are the scientific foundation for modern environmental stewardship.Chapter 13: You Are Who You EatThe adventures of Charles Elton, who described the first food chains, revealed how food is the currency in the economy of nature, and founded modern ecology. Chapter 14: Why Is the World Green?Robert Paine's pioneering experiments that overturned thinking about the roles of predators in communities, and spurred new conservation strategies.Chapter 15: A Rule of Thumb (To Save the World)What determines how many species live in a given place? The story of E.O.
Wilson and Daniel Simberloff's experimental test of the theory of island biogeography, and its application to conservation.Chapter 16: The Future of Life on a Hockey StickThe discovery by Charl.