This new series presents innovative titles pertaining to human
origins, evolution, and behavior from a multi-disciplinary
perspective. Subject areas include but are not limited to
biological and physical anthropology, prehistoric archaeology,
evolutionary psychology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary
biology. The series volumes will be of interest primarily to
students and scholars in these fields.
Until twenty years ago we had no idea which of our genes came
from our father and which came from our mother. We took it for
granted that our genes expressed themselves identically and that
there was a 50/50 chance that they came from either parent. We also
assumed that they worked in cooperation with each other. The
biggest breakthrough in genetics in the past two decades has been
the discovery of genomic imprinting, which allows us to trace genes
to the parent of origin. David Haig has been at the forefront of
theorizing these developments arguing that these "paternally and
maternally active genes" comprising less than one percent of our
total gene count are far from being cooperative, and have in fact
been shown to be in competition with one another. If Haig's theory
is correct, imprinted genes provide an extraordinary example of
within-individual conflict, which is one of the most surprising
developments in evolutionary biology in recent years. Examples like
this are shaking up our fundamental ideas of what it means to be an
individual.
This collection of Haig's papers provides a unique comprehensive
overview of what is known. Each paper is followed by a commentary
that links it to the others, provides background as needed, and
brings readers up-to-date on developments thatoccurred after the
paper's original publication. Because genomic imprinting raises
questions across various fields in the life sciences, including
evolutionary biology and developmental genetics, Haig's work is
scattered through the literature to an unusual degree, and has
never been collected in one volume.
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