EVOLUTION:
Molecular Origin of Species
Masatoshi Nei and Jianzhi Zhang
The making of new species is a fundamental step in evolution, and the molecular basis of this process is just beginning to be worked out, say Nei and Zhang in their Perspective. They discuss two recent examples (one reported by Ting et al. in this issue) in which the concerted evolution of interacting molecules controls reproductive isolation, the first step in the speciation process.
The authors are in the Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802-5301, USA. E-mail: nxm2{at}psu.edu