The study of biochemical adaption provides fascinating insights into how organisms work and how they evolve to sustain physiological function under a vast array of environmental conditions. This book describes how the abilities of organisms to thrive in widely different environments derive
from two fundamental classes of biochemical adaptions: modifications of core biochemical processes that allow a common set of physiological functions to be conserved, and inventions of new biochemical traits that allow entry into novel habitats. Biochemical Adaptation: Mechanisms and Process in
Physiological Evolution asks two primary questions. First, how have the core biochemical systems found in all species been adaptively modified to allow the same fundamental types of physiological processes to be sustained throughout the wide range of habitat conditions found in the biosphere?