Week 2 Bio! Thoughts on Evo Devo
Evo Devo
I'm not quite sure if I understood the third wave of evolutionary studies: Evolution of development.
From the article, I learned that researchers discovered "gene clusters" which are these basic sets of genes that we all have and allow us to form in the embryo in the most fundamental ways: a top half, a bottom half, where our eyes go... This discovery implies that, "the whole spring of animal diversity, has been fed by essentially this same set of genes" and that creating new forms is not a process starting from scratch! You don't have to reinvent the wheel to invent a new species apparently!
What comes to mind is how efficient this is. Take eyes, they are so specialized and even among their differences across animal species, the point is that we can all see something. When it comes to biology, I tend to think eyes are the most amazing! As Dr. Phillips says, real "fancy equipment" ;)
So it's cool to think that in evolution there's more preserving than we previously thought.
If I had to explain this to a 14 year old, I would say: take your basic superhero movie. What happens? usually there's an origin story, so you get into that background, there's acquiring superpowers, a bulk of the plot, there's villain(s), and there's someone the superhero cares about who needs saving. This is the basic premise of like, every superhero movie! But are all superhero movies the same? No! They are all so special and different! Dr. Strange is soooo different than Thor! or Black Widow (she needs her own movie already!)... and we enjoy them all :) But the basic structure of these movies is actually the same, albeit with some useful mutations which best fits the environment. As Dr. Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy showed us, the environment (of making a lot of money in Hollywood) is currently suited to "family friendly" with some 'grit' - the kids should enjoy pratfalls and the parents should enjoy some sexual innuendos and pop culture references.
This is like gene clusters. You need these gene clusters to have an organism just like you need a plot to have a movie. A certain gene cluster looks like this species, and a certain plot looks like this genre... to make subsequent species, there's no need to start from square one because you already have a set of genes that can be used. Nature is efficient and/or lazy :)
I'm not quite sure if I understood the third wave of evolutionary studies: Evolution of development.
From the article, I learned that researchers discovered "gene clusters" which are these basic sets of genes that we all have and allow us to form in the embryo in the most fundamental ways: a top half, a bottom half, where our eyes go... This discovery implies that, "the whole spring of animal diversity, has been fed by essentially this same set of genes" and that creating new forms is not a process starting from scratch! You don't have to reinvent the wheel to invent a new species apparently!
What comes to mind is how efficient this is. Take eyes, they are so specialized and even among their differences across animal species, the point is that we can all see something. When it comes to biology, I tend to think eyes are the most amazing! As Dr. Phillips says, real "fancy equipment" ;)
So it's cool to think that in evolution there's more preserving than we previously thought.
If I had to explain this to a 14 year old, I would say: take your basic superhero movie. What happens? usually there's an origin story, so you get into that background, there's acquiring superpowers, a bulk of the plot, there's villain(s), and there's someone the superhero cares about who needs saving. This is the basic premise of like, every superhero movie! But are all superhero movies the same? No! They are all so special and different! Dr. Strange is soooo different than Thor! or Black Widow (she needs her own movie already!)... and we enjoy them all :) But the basic structure of these movies is actually the same, albeit with some useful mutations which best fits the environment. As Dr. Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy showed us, the environment (of making a lot of money in Hollywood) is currently suited to "family friendly" with some 'grit' - the kids should enjoy pratfalls and the parents should enjoy some sexual innuendos and pop culture references.
This is like gene clusters. You need these gene clusters to have an organism just like you need a plot to have a movie. A certain gene cluster looks like this species, and a certain plot looks like this genre... to make subsequent species, there's no need to start from square one because you already have a set of genes that can be used. Nature is efficient and/or lazy :)
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