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Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom
Books: Text Books: Developmental: Item 8
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Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdomby Sean B. Carroll
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61 of 65 people found the following review helpful: Darwin Updated, July 13, 2005 Reviewer:David B Richman (Mesilla Park, NM USA) - Classical experimental and comparative embryology is a field that has fallen on hard times until recently. When I attended the University of Arizona there was a full blown course in embryology, both descriptive and experimental. By the time I was a graduate student at the same institution the course had been rolled into Organismic Biology in which all of embryology was loaded into a third of a semester. In essence developmental biology in relation to evolutionary studies gave way to molecular. Still some pretty good work went on in the background that impinged on development and was to result in the discovery of HOX genes. HOX genes (or homeotic genes) proved to be the "organizer" that was postulated by various experimental embryologists such as Spemann. Even more astoundingly they proved to be pretty much the same, no matter which organism was being studied. HOX genes in humans were essentially identical to those of insects! This remarkable fact offers proof for the idea that all life is related and that development is a key factor in evolution. In "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" Sean B. Carroll explains the significance of such discoveries as the genetic "tool kit" (including HOX genes) on our understanding of evolution and of development. Indeed, this is a fascinating story that has already caused me to rethink some of my understanding of evolutionary principles. We live in an amazing world in an amazing universe. The genetic material made up of DNA is a very remarkable material. What other materials could have developed huge numbers of organisms (as many as 30 million extant) that vary from zebras to sulfur bacteria? Yet that complexity appears to have developed from a very simple beginning. Carroll was influenced by Steven J. Gould in his interest in biology, but he does not flinch from disagreeing with Gould about contingency. Carroll says that if the tape of evolution were run again, pretty much the same thing would have happened. I think that I may have to agree to a point (although not as far as Simon Conway Morris goes with it). However, certain alterations in earth history might still have caused a radical change in the outcome, as in the development of a completely water covered planet or a very large asteroid strike (larger that the one that apparently killed the dinosaurs except birds). At the same time not all evolved faunas that developed in isolation from each other resemble each other exactly. The marsupials of Australia, for example, had a number of forms similar to placental mammals. However, there was no exact analog to the kangaroo outside of Australia or of hoofed animals in Australia (giant wombats don't have hooves). I agree faunas can be similar, but not necessarily identical and that intelligent life may be inevitable, but may not necessarily have looked like us or even evolved from mammals. That said, evo-devo, as the evolutionary development researchers call it, has much to offer and it certainly cannot be dismissed. This is an exciting time to be involved with evolutionary biology, despite the creationist (or more sophisticated "Intelligent Design") attack on the whole idea. This is an excellent introduction to the excitement of a continuing unfolding of evolutionary thought. I recommend it highly.
Product Review
"Every animal form is the product of two processes--development from an egg and evolution from its ancestors," writes Sean B. Carroll in his introduction to Endless Forms Most Beautiful. The new science of "evo devo"--or evolutionary developmental biology--examines the relationships between those two processes, embryonic development and evolutionary changes, despite their radically different time scales. Carroll first offers a recap of how genes express themselves in a growing embryo, then peers into the life histories of real-life examples to explain how those genes have changed (or not changed) over millions of years of evolution. Paraphrasing Thomas Huxley, he asks us to consider evolution and development as two sides of the same coin.
We may marvel at the process of an egg becoming an adult, but we accept it as an everyday fact. It is merely then a lack of imagination to fail to grasp how changes in this process that assimilated over long periods of time, far longer than the span of human experience, shape life's diversity."The book's second half is where Carroll really gets at the meat of evo devo, explaining how regulatory genes control such mysteries as individual and population changes in butterfly's spots, jaguar fur, and hominid skulls. Evo devo is one of the hottest areas of study in 21st-century biology, and Carroll's outline of the field is a great place to start understanding it. --Therese Littleton
From Publishers Weekly
Cobb County textbook stickers aside, evolutionary natural selection offers a pretty straightforward explanation for the forward march of species through history; a mutation that better equips a given organism to survive is passed along to its heirs, becoming more common as successive generations flourish. The actual process by which mutations happen, however, was far more mysterious until scientists turned to the study of evolutionary development (known by the somewhat unfortunate moniker "Evo Devo"). One such scientist is Carroll, a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who guides us along the broad contours of development ("the process through which a single-celled egg gives rise to a complex, multibillion-celled animal") and the ways in which its study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms of evolution. He explains in concrete terms how small changes in a species's genetic code of a given species can lead to dramatic differences in physiology is the "missing piece" of evolutionary theory, Carroll argues. The book is as much a salvo in the continuing battles between creationists and evolutionists as it is a popularization of science, and Carroll combines clear writing with the deep knowledge gained from a lifetime of genetics research, first laying out the principles of evolutionary development and then showing us how they can explain both the progression of species in the fossil record and outliers like a six-fingered baseball pitcher. (Apr.)
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