The study of biochemical adaption provides fascinating insights into how organisms "work" and how they evolve to sustain physiological function under a vast array of environmental conditions. This book describes how the abilities of organisms to thrive in widely different environments derive from two fundamental classes of biochemical adaptions: modifications of core biochemical processes that allow a common set of physiological functions to be conserved, and "inventions" of new biochemical traits that allow entry into novel habitats. Biochemical Adaptation: Mechanisms and Process in Physiological Evolution asks two primary questions. First, how have the core biochemical systems found in all species been adaptively modified to allow the same fundamental types of physiological processes to be sustained throughout the wide range of habitat conditions found in the biosphere? Second, through what types of genetic and biochemical processes have new physiological functions been fabricated? The primary audience for this book is faculty, senior undergraduates, and graduate students in environmental biology, comparative physiology, and marine biology. Other likely readers include workers in governmental laboratories concerned with environmental issues, medical students interested in some elements of the book, and medical researchers.

Peter W. Hochachka's profile page

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Peter W. Hochachka is at University of British Columbia. George N. Somero is at Stanford University.

"Noting that "an underlying unity in biochemical design persists in the face of a remarkable degree of adaptive diversification in biochemical structures and processes," Hochachka (zoology, radiology, and sports medicine, U. of British Columbia, Canada) and Somero (director, Stanford U.'s Hopkins Marine Station) explain the evolutionary and genetic mechanisms by which organisms' biochemical systems have adapted so as to exploit a huge range of ecological niches on the land and in the sea. They review and analyzing the scientific literature that has appeared in the past 15 years. They come to three main conclusions about the adaptive process: that it is highly conservative and preserves biochemical unity, that the time available to an organism to fabricate and adaptive response governs strongly the types of materials that can be exploited, and that the organizational complexity of an organism create regulatory constraints not found in less complex organisms."--SciTech Book News

"The result is a masterpiece: exciting, invigorating, and challenging."--Science, VOL 296, April 2002