From Keith Bennett
Evolution’s greatest inventions? You’ve missed the one that enabled the development of the eye and the brain (9 April, p 26). Without it we would still be among those slimy things that populated the Precambrian.
The system of genes that defines front, back, top, bottom, left and right in organisms and oversees the folding of tissues into organs is surely among the top 10. It gives us all of the relationships that make evolution so obvious in the animal kingdom.
From Mike Cotterill
There is a glaring omission from your list, namely nitrogen fixation. There would probably be no land plants and few land animals were it not for bacteria capable of converting inert, triple-bonded, atmospheric nitrogen gas into organic compounds, making this essential element available to other life forms. Surely the importance of this ranks next to photosynthesis?
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Freshwater, Isle of Wight, UK
The editor writes:
• “Life’s greatest inventions” was our pick of the 10 evolutionary innovations that truly transformed life on Earth. In whittling it down to a mere 10, there were inevitably many important ones that we had to leave out – such as the two suggested here.
Cwmbran, Gwent, UK
