Selection, drift, disease and complexity, all rolled into one....

One of the great things about evolutionary genetics is that it is such a diverse field in terms of the cognitive toolkit which one must access as a matter of course. Since R. A. Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (along with the contemporaneous work of Sewall Wright and J. B. S. Haldane) we've been habituated toward thinking of evolutionary processes on an abstract level which might allow us to make general deductive inferences from first principles. Genetic drift, selection, migration, etc., are parameters which are used to construct models that allow us to generate predictions and obtain deeper insight. The discovery of DNA and the elucidation of the biophysical substrate which constrains the modes of inheritance in a concrete manner opened up the startling vistas of molecular evolutionary genetics. This discipline has allowed an inspection of how the predictions of evolutionary theory are born out on a more ...