Life Without Genes

Can life exist without genes? What happens when evolution itself evolves? Taking us beyond biology and genes, through ground-breaking analysis of all the genetic clues contained in each one of us, Adrian Woolfson broadens and changes our view of the future forever.

This book asks the question: Are genes necessary for life? And it provides the most revolutionary and persuasive of answers.

Genes may, in fact, be neither necessary nor sufficient for life. Woolfson, in ringingly clear and comprehensible fashion, sketches out a putative new history of life on earth, no less. He gives Life three new distinct ages: the geneless, the pre-genetic and the genetic. And then goes on to depict when and how the Geneless World existed, and to go further into the laws of chance and complexity to describe the space of all possible worlds, all possible organisms, all possible lifeforms.

It is mind-bending, genuinely dizzying intellectual fodder. Among its more dazzling implications are that the DNA Age might turn out to be as ephemeral as the Iron Age. So, what comes next, and how soon…?

This is one of the most exciting popular science books of recent years, with a compelling and genuinely original new thesis at its heart, and with an author capable of talking convincingly to specialist and non-specialist alike.

A scientific publishing event.