Conference "Sciences of the universe: order and chaos"

Biological evolution is a mixture of deterministic and random phenomena. While the nature of the genetic mutations that give rise to a variety of offspring is stochastic, the natural selection that allows the sorting of variants is based on more deterministic processes. In addition to this Darwinian evolution, there is also gene drift, which results from stochastic processes unconstrained by natural selection.

Chance and necessity... can we distinguish between the two in biology? Starting from the same initial physico-chemical conditions on a planet, will we necessarily end up with the emergence of life? And, if life has appeared on other planets, should we expect it to have led to living forms similar to those on Earth?

Meeting with Purificacion Garcia-Lopez
Director of research at the CNRS, Ecology, Systematics and Evolution (ESE) laboratory in Orsay.

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