Editing Modern synthesis (20th century) (section)

===Koonin's 'post-modern' evolutionary synthesis, 2009===
[[File:Tree Of Life (with horizontal gene transfer).svg|thumb|A 21st century [[Tree of life (biology)|tree of life]] showing [[horizontal gene transfer]]s among [[prokaryote]]s and the saltational [[endosymbiosis]] events that created the [[eukaryote]]s, neither fitting into the 20th century's modern synthesis]]

In 2009, Darwin's 200th anniversary, the ''Origin of Species''{{'}} 150th, and the 200th of Lamarck's "early evolutionary synthesis",<ref name=Koonin2009/> ''[[Philosophie Zoologique]]'', the evolutionary biologist [[Eugene Koonin]] stated that while "the edifice of the [early 20th century] Modern Synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair",<ref name=Koonin2009/> a new 21st-century synthesis could be glimpsed. Three interlocking revolutions had, he argued, taken place in evolutionary biology: molecular, microbiological, and genomic. The [[molecular biology|molecular revolution]] included the [[Neutral theory of molecular evolution|neutral theory]], that most mutations are neutral and that [[Negative selection (natural selection)|negative selection]] happens more often than the [[Directional selection|positive]] form, and that all current life evolved from [[Last Universal Common Ancestor|a single common ancestor]]. In microbiology, the synthesis has expanded to cover the [[prokaryote]]s, using [[ribosomal RNA]] to form a [[tree of life (biology)|tree of life]]. Finally, [[genomics]] brought together the molecular and microbiological syntheses - in particular, [[horizontal gene transfer]] between [[bacteria]] shows that prokaryotes can freely share genes. Many of these points had already been made by other researchers such as Ulrich Kutschera and [[Karl J. Niklas]].<ref name="Kutschera Niklas 2004">{{cite journal |last1=Kutschera |first1=Ulrich |author-link1=Ulrich Kutschera |last2=Niklas |first2=Karl J. |author-link2=Karl J. Niklas |date=June 2004 |title=The modern theory of biological evolution: an expanded synthesis |journal=[[Naturwissenschaften]] |volume=91 |issue=6 |pages=255–276 |bibcode=2004NW.....91..255K |doi=10.1007/s00114-004-0515-y |pmid=15241603 |s2cid=10731711 }}</ref>