section_path: History of evolutionary thought/Further syntheses
section_name: Further syntheses
paragraph_text: Further syntheses
  
  Since then, further syntheses have extended evolution's explanatory power in the light of numerous discoveries, to cover biological phenomena across the whole of the biological hierarchy from genes to populations.
  
  The publication of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick with contribution of Rosalind Franklin in 1953 demonstrated a physical mechanism for inheritance. Molecular biology improved understanding of the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Advances were also made in phylogenetic systematics, mapping the transition of traits into a comparative and testable framework through the publication and use of evolutionary trees. In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky penned that " nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution ", because it has brought to light the relations of what first seemed disjointed facts in natural history into a coherent explanatory body of knowledge that describes and predicts many observable facts about life on this planet.
  
  One extension, known as evolutionary developmental biology and informally called "evo-devo", emphasises how changes between generations (evolution) act on patterns of change within individual organisms (development). Since the beginning of the 21st century, some biologists have argued for an extended evolutionary synthesis, which would account for the effects of non-genetic inheritance modes, such as epigenetics, parental effects, ecological inheritance and cultural inheritance, and evolvability.