I seem to be on evolution today, forgive me.
There is a new branch of science know as evo devo and its prophet Sean Carroll has just released a book entitled Endless Forms Most Beautiful. You should skim through the review, it's fascinating.
Click here to continue reading.
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This is a continuation of Devo Lives!
Here is my brief and unqualified explanation: Turns out the genetic revolution in evolutionary biology crowded out earlier studies in embryotic development as important in understanding evolution. Powell, and others, have begun to go back to studying development and have some evidence to suggest that both how and gene gets expressed in your body and how it is expressed in different animals depend on protein switches that control how genes are expressed. This means that genetic drift becomes lass "dangerous" or results in less totally unworkable possibilities because few genetic changes would be off the wall because the basic genes for how you build an animal remain the same and it is only details in how this plan is expressed that change often, i.e.it's modular.
Now, apparently, there is proof that this is not always what happens. The old version of gene mutation does happen, but it tends to be disruptive (the reviewer talks about the emergence of mammals as an example of this). Anyway, as an avid consumer of pop science I am officially caught.
What I find interesting in my unknowledgable state, but which nobody comes close to mentioning, is the curious way in which this system seems to gel with the better explanations of ID I have heard. The article goes into great detail about how almost all life forms have the same "ancient tool kit" genes and they are billions of years old. Is it just me or does this sound suspiciously like a system set up such that it can be endlessly creative in a basic format.
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