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purposive." Beginning with a review of Barbara McClintock's paradigm-shattering work in the 1940s on transposable controlling elements (transposons), which at the time was widely rejected or ignored (although she was later awarded the Nobel Prize), Shapiro then provides in tabular form a comprehensive review of the work over many years on genomic innovations that could be attributed to mobile DNA elements, as well as the work on how environmental stresses trigger increased mobile DNA activity.He notes that "mobile DNA elements and other biological engines of genome change constitute essential survival tools in a dynamic ecology, and that is why they are ubiquitous in living organisms."He concludes: "Recognition of the cognitive aspect of the evolutionary process opens a range of hitherto forbidden ques- tions for scientific exploration. . .. It may well be the case that living organisms [which] ] are incapable of actively modifying their genomes would be doomed to extinction" (italics added). If that inference turns out to be correct, then genome self-modification, or re-writing, would be another essential goal-oriented function to incorporate into our definition of what it means to be alive. Anthony Trewavas, in chapter 16, summarizes his many publications which have docu-

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