So I’ve decided that its too hard to do a haiku on a book about evolutionary development. Instead I’ll give a quick review of this book.
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Sean Carroll is an attempt to highlight the importance of the new science of ‘Evo Devo’ in evolutionary biology. I’m convinced by nearly all of Carroll’s arguments on the importance of Evo Devo and its explanatory power. Evo Devo as far as I can tell is an explanation of how studying the development of embryos can provide clues about macroevolution. Important points include showing how, despite nearly identical genetic coding for certain proteins in the entire phylogenetic tree, diversity is possible. It turns out that all organisms share a general genetic tool kit from which we are built. This gives rise to an apparent paradox; how is it that such diversity is possible giving gene sequences that code for the same proteins. Evo Devo shows us that the switching mechanisms that activate certain genes can alter in ways that cause the tool kit genes to perform different functions. These switches modularize an embryo and cause the same codes to perform different actions in different modules. This modularity increases defect tolerance in embryos allowing for variations that would not be possible otherwise. I’m still new to the science of Evo Devo so I’m skimping on the details, but I think the content of this book is a neccessary piece in the evolutionary story.
As far as the writing goes I think it could have been better, especially the first half. The second half is better espeically later chapters where he discusses the role of Evo Devo in the rest of evolutionary biology. The book tries to walk the fine line between technical and accessible and this might be why I was a little put off at some points. However, on reflection I think this book is important and recommend it to anyone who wants to get at the big picture of evolution. I would recommend reading something general on evolution first (if this is your first foray) because this book does focus on the role of evo devo rather than the larger picture of evolutionary biology (for this i’d recommend Ernst Mayr’s “What Evolution Is”).
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful”
So I’ve decided that its too hard to do a haiku on a book about evolutionary development. Instead I’ll give a quick review of this book.
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Sean Carroll is an attempt to highlight the importance of the new science of ‘Evo Devo’ in evolutionary biology. I’m convinced by nearly all of Carroll’s arguments on the importance of Evo Devo and its explanatory power. Evo Devo as far as I can tell is an explanation of how studying the development of embryos can provide clues about macroevolution. Important points include showing how, despite nearly identical genetic coding for certain proteins in the entire phylogenetic tree, diversity is possible. It turns out that all organisms share a general genetic tool kit from which we are built. This gives rise to an apparent paradox; how is it that such diversity is possible giving gene sequences that code for the same proteins. Evo Devo shows us that the switching mechanisms that activate certain genes can alter in ways that cause the tool kit genes to perform different functions. These switches modularize an embryo and cause the same codes to perform different actions in different modules. This modularity increases defect tolerance in embryos allowing for variations that would not be possible otherwise. I’m still new to the science of Evo Devo so I’m skimping on the details, but I think the content of this book is a neccessary piece in the evolutionary story.
As far as the writing goes I think it could have been better, especially the first half. The second half is better espeically later chapters where he discusses the role of Evo Devo in the rest of evolutionary biology. The book tries to walk the fine line between technical and accessible and this might be why I was a little put off at some points. However, on reflection I think this book is important and recommend it to anyone who wants to get at the big picture of evolution. I would recommend reading something general on evolution first (if this is your first foray) because this book does focus on the role of evo devo rather than the larger picture of evolutionary biology (for this i’d recommend Ernst Mayr’s “What Evolution Is”).