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Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 571.85
EAN: 9780393060164
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0393060160
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 350
Publication Date: April 11, 2005
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Editorial 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
Evo Devo is evolutionary development biology, the third revolution in evolutionary biology. The first was marked by the publication of The Origin of Species. The second occurred in the early twentieth century, when Darwin's theories were merged with the study of genetics. Now the insights of Evo Devo are astonishing the biology world by showing how the endless forms of animals--butterflies and zebras, trilobites and dinosaurs, apes and humans, are made and evolved. Perhaps the most surprising finding of Evo Devo is the discovery that a small number of primitive genes led to the formation of fundamental organs and appendages in all animal forms. The gene that causes humans to form arms and legs is the same gene that causes birds and insects to form wings, and fish to form fins; similarly, one ancient gene has led to the creation of eyes across the animal kingdom. Changes in the way this ancient tool kit of genes is used have created all the diversity that surrounds us. Sean Carroll is the ideal author to lead the curious on this intellectual adventure--he is the acknowledged leader of the field, and his seminal discoveries have been featured in Time and the New York Times.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Sean Carroll has done it again
This is a fantastic read; informative, yet laid-back enough to make it easy to digest. Carroll has a way of integrating just enough humor to keep you interested, without going overboard. If you're super science-savvy, you may be a bit bored in a few places where he goes over the basics of DNA structure, etc., but the fact that he starts at the bottom makes his books suitable for a much broader audience. If you want a good popular-science style read, this is your book.
Rating:  - Parsimony of Nature in Action -- As Darwin Stated
With all of the general intros into contemporary genetics and significance of mutant changes, it is sometimes difficult to obtain a book that has a specific hook incorporating a really unique theme in Evolution. Here we are over 150 years on and Darwin is still teaching us new and wonderful things in the guise of evolutionary development.
In this book the new science of evolutionary development biology is explained as one of the core understandings of how natural selection actually ... Read More
Rating: - Super info - ok writing
This book is so full of interesting, amazing information - but the writing is very, very dry. I loved "Your Inner Fish" which overlaps the content of this book, but is much more engaging.
Rating:  - Interesting reading
This is an interesting take on evo-devo. I'd recommend it for the popular science reader (its stays in pretty shallow waters scientifically).
Rating: - The "Butterfly Effect" in the genes
The best feature of this book is the fantastic sense of the complexity of the development of the organism from the genes. Sean shows with genius how the tiniest changes in a gene can lead to huge effects in the developing organism -- much like in Chaos theory (see the book "Chaos: making a new science" for example)in mathematics where complex systems are affected by the tiniest influences (i.e., a puff of air from a butterfly's wings) which can be magnified to change the entire face of a complex ... Read More
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