Biology

Life on Earth is facing a mass extinction event of our own making. Human activity is changing the biology and the meaning of extinction. What Is Extinction? examines several key moments that have come to define the terms of extinction over the past two centuries, exploring instances of animal and human finitude and the cultural forms used to document and interpret these events. Offering a critical theory for the critically endangered, Joshua Schuster proposes that different discourses of limits and lastness appear in specific extinction events over time as a response to changing attitudes toward species frailty.

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the advent of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offered a revolutionary new perspective that transformed the classical neo-Darwinian, gene-centered study of evolution. In The Architecture of Evolution, Marco Tamborini demonstrates how this radical innovation was made possible by the largely forgotten study of morphology. Despite the key role morphology played in the development of evolutionary biology since the 1940s, the architecture of organisms was excluded from the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. And yet, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s and '80s, morphologists sought to understand how organisms were built and how organismal forms could be generated and controlled.

This work provides a profile of the Thylacine, the Tasmanian Tiger, covering its its ecology, evolution, encounters with humans, and extinction.

The development of the COVID-19 vaccine is one of the most dramatic developments in biotechnology in recent years, not only because of its rapid development but also the new technologies implemented in it. These technologies, however, remain controversial. In Longshot, investigative journalist David Heath takes readers inside the small group of scientists whose groundbreaking work was once largely dismissed but proved incredibly important for the vaccine. With never-before-reported details, Heath reveals how these scientists overcame countless obstacles to give the world an unprecedented head start when we needed a COVID-19 vaccine.

The cell is the smallest living component of the human body as well as the smallest unit of life. Issues that occur in cells can ripple up to causing much larger problems in our bodies. Author Siddhartha Mukherjee describes the history of cellular biology from its origins with the invention of the microscope in the late 1600s to the high tech cellular therapies of today. He is able to weave together history, biology, and the all important human factor of discovery.

Toxoplasma gondii is a globally spread protozoan parasite responsible for causing toxoplasmosis. Infection by T. gondii shows high seroprevalence in humans, especially in South America. Written by specialists, this book brings important contributions and information on parasite biology, including its life cycle, ultrastructural features of tachyzoite, bradyzoite and their main specific organelles, mechanisms of host cell invasion, parasite replication and epigenetics regulation.