The molecular tangled bank: Not seeing the phylogenies for the trees

About 40 years ago, in a gesture of civic enlightenment, the United States Congress passed legislation that converted the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA; in existence since 1915) to NASA (National Aeronauti cs and Space Administration). The Space Act, no doubt in partial response t o the launching of the first near-Earth satellite, Sputnik, by the Soviet U nion, established NASA in 1958. This legislation is arguably the most well- written and enlightened government document to be created since the 18th ce ntury Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence. Many of the stated goals of the 1958 Space Act were meant to generate new k nowledge about the universe at large, but the statement that has most direc tly concerned molecular evolution is the following (1, p. 4): A major goal of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is to und erstand the origin and evolution of life as a phenomenon in the solar syste m [or wherever in the universe it may reside]. Three objectives are seen as fundamental to planetary biology and chemical evolution (1, p. 5): (1) Understanding the origin and evolution of life; (2) understanding the cycles that sustain life-the interactions between the physical, chemical and biological phenomena on the surface of the planer E arth; and (3) understanding the effects of life, both past and present, on the planer .