Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo by Sean B. Carroll (PDF)

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“A beautiful and very important book.”―Lewis Wolpert, American Scientist For over a century, opening the black box of embryonic development was the holy grail of biology. Evo Devo―Evolutionary Developmental Biology―is the new science that has finally cracked open the box. Within the pages of his rich and riveting book, Sean B. Carroll explains how we are discovering that complex life is ironically much simpler than anyone ever expected.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “One of the essential books of our times…[explains] for a general audience how the shapes of organisms are produced by genes.” ― Peter Forbes, The Guardian”[Carroll] reveals a remarkable series of insights into how evolution has shaped―and continues to shape―the wondrous assortment of creatures that share this planet with us. He emerges as the new, user-friendly public face of evolutionary science.” ― Thomas Hayden, US News & World Report”Carroll is a gifted writer…In light of this new understanding (Evo Devo), the objections to evolutionary theory based on transitional gaps and irreducible complexity become more obtuse than ever.” ― Library Journal”Combines clear writing with a deep knowledge.” ― Publishers Weekly About the Author Sean B. Carroll is professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His first book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, was a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Carroll’s seminal scientific work has been featured in Time and The New Yorker. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐It is a very well written book, on an immensely interesting topic in current biology. Written to the mythical average intelligent layperson without biological science studies. It doesn’t require even bio101 to understand and it does get into topics which could be difficult if presented badly. The author is to be commended for not just his depth of biological studies but even more for his ability to popularize and write good science at a level that people can understand. I expect to see much more from this author over the years, this book is making the rounds of the discussion boards and i have yet to see a reviewer bad mouth the book.Start with one of two chapters, 5:The Dark matter of the Genome if you want to see an excellent discussion of hox genes or 6:The Big Bang of Animal Evolution if you’d rather see the effect of hox genes on the development of different creatures. Either one ought to tell you enough about how you will react to the book in order to decide to read it all. It is not so difficult that you have to own a copy and mark it up, library usage is possible with this book, an unusual thing for even popular science.The main point of the book is that evo devo=evolutionary development is adding so much information and substantiating so much theory that evolutionary biology ought to consider a new paradigm, the modern synthesis + evo devo(and embryology), as the new core of the biological sciences. Like the commonality of the genetic code mapping DNA codons to tRNA, hox genes have unified biology like nothing else since the incorporation of genetics into darwinianism in the 1930’s(forming the modern synthesis). Not only their extraordinary widespreadness from round worms to fruit flies to human beings, something that was not predicted even 30 years ago, but the pervasiveness of mutations in those critical genes, their switches and other regulatory sequences and how it so greatly effects body plans.Get together a few pullquotes and summary aphorisms from the book:Preface: Revolution #3″the key to any scientific advance is to be able “to explain the complex visible by some simple invisible”””development is intimately connected to evolution because it is through changes in embryos that changes in form arise.”Introduction: Butterflies, Zebras, and Embryos”The great variety in the size, shape, organizatin, and color of animal bodies raises deep questions about the origins of animal forms. How are individual forms generated? And how have such diverse forms evolved?””The key to answering such questions is to realize that every animal form is the product of two processes-development from an egg and evolution from its ancestors.””all complex animals…share a common tool kit of master genes that govern the formation and patterning of their bodies and body parts.””The first idea is that diversity is not so much a matter of the complement of genes in an animal’s tool kit, but, in the words of Eric Clapton, ‘it’s in the way that you use it'”.”The second idea concerns where in the genome the smoking guns for the evolution in form are found.”about 3% of our DNA is regulatory, about 100 million individual bits.”as splendid examples of how nature invents by teaching very old genes new tricks””here in act III, there is also a special grandeur in the view embryology and evolutionary developmental biology provide into the making of animal form and diversity.”in regards to what is beautiful in science, “There’s a fog of events and suddenly you see a connection. It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply to you, that connects things that were always in you that were never put together before.”Part 1: The Making of Animals1: Animal Architecture: Modern Forms, Ancient Designs”individual animals are made up of numbers of the same kinds of parts, like building blocks.””The theme of modular design is by no neans limited to vertebrates.””Is there a connection between modularity of design and the success in evolutionary diversifications?” pg 26homologs, “This means they are the same structure modified in different ways in each species.=”forelimbs of mice and menserial homologs, “structures that arose as a repeated series and have become differentiatied to varying degrees in different animals.”=forelimbs and hindlimbsaxis of symmetry, axis of polarity=head to tail, top to bottom, on things that project, near to the body and further away from it 34″four main questions””1. What are some of the major rules for generating animal form?2.how is the species specific information for building a particular animal encoded?3. How does diversity evolve?4.What explains large-scale trends in evolution, such as the chage in number and function of repeated parts?”2: Monsters, Mutants, and Naster Genesthe importance of the study of monster=with the wrong number of parts or parts in the wrong places. 38″the cells of organizers produce substances that can influence the development of other cells.” eyespot organizer, Spemann’s organizer and the zone of polarizing activity. the dorsal lip of the blastopore.concentration gradients of morphogens3: From E. Coli to Elephants”So the long-standing assumption has been the greater the disparity in form, the less, if anything any two species would have in cmmon at the level of their genes.” 54evo devo destroys this assumption. very unlike creatures are very alike in their form generating ways.”The selective production of proteins in some places and not others, or at some times and not others, if fundamental to the making of complex organisms.””not even the most ardent advocate of fruit fly research predicted the universal distribution and importance of Hox genes. The implications were stunning, Disparate animals were built using not just the same kinds of tools, but indeed, the very same genes!” 65″a large portion of the tool kit is composed of transcription factors” 74signaling pathways:=modest number of them, fruit fly about 10, consist of signals, receptiors, and various intermediates which traffic the signal through the components fo the cell, into the nucleus.4: Making Babies: 25K Genes, Some Assembly Required”Mapmaking is one of the first stages of scientific exploration.””The images of tool kit genes in embryos create a vivid, dynamic map of the geography of the growing embry-a map that reveals to us the order and logic of how complex animals are progressively construction from simple egg through the work of tool kit genes.” 84″At what point in embryonic development is a cell’s fate sealed?” terminal differentiationfate maps and the geography of the embryolongitudes, the east-west axis and stripeslatitudes, the north-south axis”The axes and tissue layers of vertebrate embryos are organized by a chain of inductive events, where the production of one molecule induces others and so on.” 99the making of limbs, proximal and distal axis, growing a limb bud outward and giving it a front back, top bottom orientation.”Stripes that foreshadowed segments, patches that revealed powerful zones of organizing activity and other patterns that marked positions of bones, joints, muscles, organs, limbs, etc.-allof these connected invisible genes to the making of visible forms.””The complexity arises from the parallel and sequential action of tool kit genes-dozen of genes acting at the same time and plcae, may more genes acting in different places at the same time, and hundreds of tool kit genes acting in sequence as development progresses. The chain of parallel and successive operations is what builds complexity.” 1065: The Dark Matter of the Genome: Operating Instructions for the Tool Kitgenetic switches: “one gene may be regulated by many separate switches such that the gene is used many times and in different places-” 113″The general function of a switch is to transform existing patterns of gene activity into a new pattern of gene activity.”switches can have multiple inputs: activators and repressors”An average-size switch is usually several hundred base pairs of DNA long. Within this span there may be anywhere from a half dozen to twenty or more signature sequence for several different proteins.” 118″The whole tool kit of an anaimal contains several hundred or so different DNA-binding proteins, most with different signature preferences.””A gene not only may have multiple switches for different subpatterns of expression at a given time, but will frequently have different switches that control entirely different patterns in different tissues and at different stages in development.”two levels of switches: those that activate the HOX genes themselves and those that contain signature sequences that are recognized by the Hox proteins and control how other genes are expressed.Part II: Fossils, Genes, and the Making of Animal Diversityanimal forms evolve by changes in embryo geography”the impact of Evo Devo come sfrom both its noveltry and the unprecedented quality of evidence it provides.”6: The Big Bang of Animal Evolution”The simplest and, for a long time, the most commonly held idea relating genes to the evolution of complex form is that new genes must evolve in order for new kinds of body designs and structure to arise.” 150″The increase in the number of different appendage and sgment types in arthropod evoltuin is the product of generating a greater number of unique zones in the embryo in which specific indivdiual or combinations of Hox genes are expressed. This relative shifting of Hox zones is therefore one of the mechanisms underpinnning Williston’s Law-the specialization of repetitive parts requires at the different parts fall into different Hox zones.””Evolutionary shifts in Hox zones arise through changes in the DNA sequences of Hox gene switches.” 163″Changing the sequence fo switches allows for changes to embryo geography without disrupting the functionalintegrity of a tool kit protein.”7: Little Bangs: Wings and Other Revolutionary Inventions”Namely, structures that evolve a dedicated function are often drvied from a preexisting structure that served more than one role. The duplication of the original structure enbabled the subdivison of labor among two distinct structures. Furthermore, selected for a new purpose, the structure can then evolve further modifications and specializations.” 168″The importance of serially repetitive body design is the ability to shift the burden of some task from two of more pairs of structures onto fewer structures, then to specialize the free-up structures for new purposes.””The whole story of arthropod limb evolution revolves around the orgin and modification of an ancestral biramous (orked)limb.the four secrets of evolutionary innovation:1-to work with what is already present2-multifunctionality3-redundancy4-modularity”switches are the secret to modularity and modularity the secret to arthropod and vertebrate success.” 195innovation allows for invasion of new niches, and invasion leads to the expansion of diversity”8: How the Butterfly Got Its Spots9: Paint It Black10: A Beautiful Mind: The Making of Homo sapiens”brain evolution exhibits a mosaic pattern, with certain parts of the brain chagning in concert with another, but independently of other parts.” 263″weight of genetic evidence is telling us that the evolution of primates, great apes, and humans is due to changes more in the control of genes than in the proteins the genes encode.” 270FOXP2 gene, language, selective sweep=pattern of reduced variation at a gene relative to its neighbors due to natural selection on that sequence variation.11: Endless Forms Most Beautifulthe ancient origin of the genes for building all sorts of animals, very similar sets of tool kit proteins was entirely unexpected. 255reveals deep connections between animal groups that were not al all appreciated form their dramatically different morphologiesthe discovery that organs and structures which were viewed as independent analogous inventions have common genetic ingredients in their development.Sources and Further Readingan excellent set of endnotes aimed at the layman and annotated nicely.As you can see from these few quotations, the book proceeds in a very orderly manner, building from the details to the big picture.The big picture is that evo devo adds greatly to biology, it integrates and explains things that were until recently hidden.It’s a good book, essential reading for those laypeople interested in the debate over origins, which the author talks about with reference to biology teaching in the last chapter. It is one of those books i wish i could make required reading…grin.

⭐Sean B. Carroll chose the title for his book, ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL, from the most widely quoted passage in all of biology as found in Charles Darwin’s THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Some years ago I read in a science magazine that the same genes responsible for the formation of the eye fruit fly, and even of the eyespot in planarian, was also responsible for eye formation in humans. I appreciate that this book presents the research behind this discovery so clearly and readably. So all of the genetic material necessary for the formation of complex, advanced life forms were in existence long before those forms actually evolved. “Insects, pterosaurs, birds, or bats did not invent ‘wing’ genes, butterflies a spot, or humans a ‘bipedalism’ or ‘speech’ gene. Rather, innovation in all of the groups has been a matter of modifying existing structures and of teaching old genes new tricks” (p.288). Gill branches in arthropod ancestors are modified into book gills, book lungs, tubular trachea, spinnerets, and wings. These modifications are no doubt still enormously complex, but it is much less so than inventing all of these structures from scratch. “The key to the making of ‘endless’ forms (i. e. diversity) is in the astronomical number of possible combination of regulatory inputs and switches” (p.287). The fact that such different structures and functions were all shaped by similar sets of tool kits was “entirely unanticipated.” However, in retrospect, as is often true when startling discoveries are made, one is (or I am, at least left with the feeling, “Of course this is how evolution must have happened.” As Dr. Carroll points out, it is profound evidence for the essential idea in Darwin’s theory that all forms of life descended (or ascended? from one common ancestor. So, with the wisdom of hindsight, it is easy to see that the “tool kit gene” mechanism was an essential feature of evolutionary theory.On the other hand, there are two key problems still left unexplained by “evo devo.” Namely, how life originated in the first place, and how genetic material made the great leap from merely replicating to being able to encode the extraordinarily complex information necessary for the functions of life. Material-reductionist science necessarily assumes that both of these — although they are actually both the same thing — occurred by pure chance. Typically, scientists who expound on evolution ignore the astronomical improbability of life occurring by chance so thoroughly that one would suppose it is a non-problem. The material-reductionist assumption is merely metaphysical, and is therefore no more scientific than the assumption that life is an intrinsic quality of existence. Typically, when I write this I get lots of indignant responses accusing me of being simply too stupid to understand straightforward scientific facts, and that I am giving support to the anti-scientific minions who are ruining American education with the superstitious nonsense of Intelligent Design. Most scientists complain that the public understanding of evolution is abominable. I am a scientist, by the way, and agree). Dr. Carroll seems to think that the only way out of this is through education, and has some confidence the evo devo can present evolution in a way that will convince people of its truth. It is hard to believe that he can actually believe that. Honest ignorance can be educated; dishonest ignorance is impregnable. The main supporters of ID have degrees in biology. And then, some scientists believe that people who do not, at least, acknowledge that the assumption that life is an innate potential is just as scientific as the assumption that it is an accidental potential are being dishonest. It is very important, if we are to understand ourselves in a way that gives life meaning, that we understand what we are. We are beings that descended (or ascended) from less complex levels of consciousness; but we need not take it for granted that we are no more than organic robots — “gene machines.”Dr. Carroll quotes the theologian John Haught when he says, “our theology requires fresh expression in evolutionary terms. When we think about God in the post-Darwinian period . . . Today we need to recast all of theology in evolutionary terms.” But there is just as great a need, if scientists want to be taken seriously, to recast evolution in theological terms. The overwhelming majority of Darwinians– if not simply all of them — are convinced that humanity evolved by mere happenstance; a self-reflective level of consciousness evolved for no reason other than because of its superior ability to survive and reproduce. I doubt that any theologian, even those theologians who accept the reality of evolution, believe this. Theologians, in short, believe that Darwin’s theory is fundamentally flawed. Natural selection defines the process of evolution, but life is its driving force, and its inherent nature is the achievement of consciousness capable of self-reflection; . I would be surprised if Dr. Haught did not agree with me here, though I suspect we would probably disagree on the nature of “God.”

⭐So it turns out forget this simplistic blueprint stuff you see in the headlines, there’s switches that switch DNA off and on and other switches that control the switches.And at root an infrastructure that goes back well beyond 500 million years that’s still controlling organisms development and potential evolution today.Fascinating stuff, a great read, and also given the underlying complexity of this subject, an easy read as well.

⭐Book is excellent however the colour plates in this edition are black and white – not to mention printed on the standard book paper – this is an issue when looking at some of the close up photographs of embryos that are supposedly subtlety coloured to illustrate certain findings. In addition one is missing entirely (4R) although the caption is there.

⭐Carroll is a geneticist at the University of Wisconsin, and his book is about the recent rise (in the last decade or so) of the science of evolutionary developmental biology.In the book he walks us through a whole set of cases where the mechanism for the way structure in living creatures develops is elucidated in great genetic detail. He discusses a series of cases where specific deformations can be shown to be the result of specific mutations, and shows us how these results can be understood and generalised.He then goes into details about fruit flies. These little creatures are a backbone of genetics research, since they are so easy and quick to handle and make experiments on. And they turn out to be extraordinarily interesting! It turns out that fruit fly genes are found all across the animal kingdom, including in us, and wherever they are found they are used in the same (generalised) way. The new understanding is of a “toolbox” approach. Nature appears to have a genetic toolbox to make the riot of different forms that we see.Then, in Part II, he becomes even more exciting. He says: “The stories I will tell create a vivid new picture of the evolutionary process … discoveries have revealed one of the ‘Holy Grails’ of evolutionary biology — the precise genetic changes responsible for evolution in particular species.” This makes my heart race!He has a section called “New genes for new animals?”, and proceeds to show that, no, it is old genes that are re-used for new animals. He has a deeply interesting chapter on appendages (legs/gills/wings/antennae) showing the genetic relationship of the various instances of these in many vastly different organisms ; and another on how the butterfly got its spots : this is a case where the genetic organising factors are rather simple and have been worked out in detail. Then follows an equally fascinating study of how the zebra got its stripes : the importance of melanism (“Paint it Black!”).Finally he has a chapter on the evolution of the human mind (“The Complex and Subtle Genetic Basis of Human Evolution”). He says: “The discoveries of FOXP2 and MYH16 have generated a great deal of excitement in scientific and medical circles as well as in the general press. But are they the whole story of the development and evolution of jaw musculature and craniofacial form, or of speech and language? Not at all. They are just the beginning.”Carroll is out to explain to us what is really happening. He doesn’t simplify! Omitting detail is not the same as simplifying! I love this book for this very reason. I finished it, being deeply informed about the realities of what is going on.All the way through Carroll’s book he is emphasising the surprise of the new discoveries. So on p4 he says, “only very recently have deep answers been discovered, many of them so surprising and profound that they have revolutionised our views of the animal world and our place in it.” He talks of “breathtaking” processes, “bombshells”, “shattering our previous notions” and so on. For Carroll, beauty in science is much more than skin-deep. The best science is an integrated product of our emotional and intellectual sides.

⭐A fascinating tour through the subject of Evolutionary Development (Evo Devo). As a writer, Sean Carroll has delivered a very comprehensive and readable book. It’s not a book that you can dip into as it builds your knowledge as it goes, which is a good thing as it goes quite deep.

⭐I spent the first 130 pages getting annoyed by references to “plate 4c”, etc. Where are the plates?!On page 131 I bumped into the “color plates”, printed in black and white on ordinary paper. The first “plate” reads “… in green and red; overlap appears yellow”. There is no green, red, or yellow.Do yourself a favor and avoid this cheapskate publisher.

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