Endless Forms Most Beautiful : The New Science of Evo Devo

from co_coyote

I started this book awhile ago, and got bogged down in some of the details. But after David Quammen's wonderful introduction to Mr. Darwin's ideas (see below) I couldn't wait to get back to it. Sure enough, this time I was more attuned to the larger ideas, and found this to be an amazing introduc...

from gregfromgilbert

A really nice introduction to the genetics of development. Not only does all life share DNA, but most higher life forms share a similar set of genes, called homeotic or Hox genes, that control the placement and development of the major body segments in the developing embryo. From flies to mice to...

from breic2

This book is quite clear and readable. It sometimes overreaches in its claims, and starts out very slowly. Instead of the high-school level exposition of genetics, it would have been more useful to talk about modern experimental setups. The book is almost entirely missing any discussion about how...

from larrycam

"Evo devo" might sound like an 80's rock band, but this book is one of those few that really does open the door to a new world of wonder -- evolutionary developmental biology, or the new and rapidly growing understanding of how a single cell is able to unfold itself, step by step, into enormously...

from name99

Yet another book on the new biology, but this time focussed on embryology and, more ambitiously, on how the regulatory mechanisms that guide embryology can fairly easily be modified to allow for apparently large-scale restructuring of organisms via fairly trivial low-level changes. As the first p...