Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA by Neil Shubin (PDF)

Description

An exciting and accessible new view of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. From the author of national bestseller, Your Inner Fish, this extraordinary journey of discovery spans centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life’s immense diversity. “Fossils, DNA, scientists with a penchant for suits of armor—what’s not to love?”—BBC Wildlife MagazineOver billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened. We have now arrived at a remarkable moment—prehistoric fossils coupled with new DNA technology have given us the tools to answer some of the basic questions of our existence: How do big changes in evolution happen? Is our presence on Earth the product of mere chance? This new science reveals a multibillion-year evolutionary history filled with twists and turns, trial and error, accident and invention. In Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin takes readers on a journey of discovery spanning centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life’s immense diversity.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “An engaging, must-read for anyone with an interest in evolution.”—Library Journal (starred review)“A rollicking ride . . . It’s light of touch, anecdote-rich and funny . . . satisfyingly informative . . . Fossils, DNA, scientists with a penchant for suits of armour—what’s not to love?”– BBC Wildlife Magazine”Another winner from Dr. Shubin, who skillfully and thoughtfully steers us through the incredibly fascinating world of DNA and fossils. Dr. Shubin’s clear and engaging writing rewards us with a deeper understanding of how all life on our planet is interconnected. Steeped in the paradigm of evolutionary theory, he inspires us to think more deeply about our connectedness with the natural world. Charles Darwin would applaud Dr. Shubin’s clear explanations and insightful rendering of the incontrovertible evidence for the evolution of all life on planet Earth.”—Donald Johanson, director, Institute of Human Origins; discoverer of “Lucy”“Neil Shubin shows himself to be a natural storyteller and a gifted scientific communicator.”—Wall Street Journal”Intimate and thoughtful . . . Exciting . . . [A] sweeping evolutionary history . . . One of the book’s best features is a 30-page notes section at the end, in which each note could be fodder for an entire volume. These notes are separated by chapter, and many tell a short, engaging story, often accompanied by annotated suggestions for further reading. Readers will want to peruse this section and follow up on some of those readings.”—Science “Neil Shubin has been one of my favorite science communicators ever since I took his undergraduate anatomy course. In this ambitious and readable book, Shubin blends his own research, epic tales from the history of science, and the latest discoveries in paleontology and genetics to tackle some of the biggest mysteries of evolution. This is an engrossing account from a scientific storyteller at the height of his talents.”—Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh paleontologist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs“Shubin is a brilliant scientist storyteller—an eloquent narrator, who draws you into his rich, evolving world of walking fish and mutant flies, prehistoric birds and precocious biologists. Part adventure, part mystery, with twists and turns you couldn’t make up if you tried, Some Assembly Required is an irresistible read!”—Robert M. Hazen, Carnegie Institution for Science, and author of Symphony in C”Through tales of remarkable creatures, and some even more remarkable people who study them, Neil Shubin unravels the mystery at the heart of evolution—how nature invents. From bacteria to brains, fish lungs to ballistic salamander tongues, Shubin decodes the surprising origins of the marvelous gadgets that have driven the riot of life’s diversity.”—Sean B. Carroll, author of The Serengeti Rules and Brave Genius”[Shubin’s] four-billion-year history from ancient fossils to DNA presents the true picture to the general reader, with engaging portraits of contributing scientists past and current.”—Nature”He has done it again. Shubin gives us an insightful, fun, and authoritative look at the big story of life and its major transformations. In Some Assembly Required, one encounters curious scientists, surprising histories and a clear sense of the ways in which a diversity of scientific perspectives provides a richer view of life than could any one perspective on its own. This terrific book is new and exciting enough to engage a biology professor (Rob) and clear and engaging enough to fascinate a high school student (Olivia). We couldn’t put it down (or rather, one of us would put it down for a minute only to have the other pick it up).”—Prof. Rob Dunn, author of Never Home Alone and Olivia Sanchez Dunn, high school student”Enjoyable . . . Eloquent . . . This superb primer brings the intellectual excitement of the scientific endeavor to life in a way that both educates and entertains.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)“A welcome new exploration of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth . . . Shubin explores it with his characteristic enthusiasm and clarity . . . A fascinating wild ride.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)“Exhilarating . . . [Shubin] is one of the best.”—Booklist (starred)“A pleasure to read . . . The exposition is clear enough to be followed by readers without background scientific training, but the range of topics discussed, the choice of illustrative details, and the historical and biographical background are such that I would expect even experts to find much in this book to inform and delight. The endnotes, as well as providing leading references and background material of interest to those who wish to dig deeper, add numerous interesting details worthy of the attention of any reader.”—3 Quarks Daily About the Author NEIL SHUBIN is the author of Some Assembly Required, Your Inner Fish, and The Universe Within. He is the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011. He lives in Chicago. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Breath of Fresh Air When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, he brought more than ships, soldiers, and weapons with his army. Seeing himself as a scientist, he wanted to transform Egypt by helping it control the Nile, improve its standard of living, and under­stand its cultural and natural history. His team included some of France’s leading engineers and scientists. Among them was Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844). Saint-Hilaire, at twenty-six, was a scientific prodigy. Already chair of zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, he was destined to become one of the greatest anatomists of all time. Even in his twenties, he distinguished himself with his ana­tomical descriptions of mammals and fish. In Napoleon’s retinue he had the exhilarating task of dissecting, analyzing, and nam­ing many of the species Napoleon’s teams were finding in the wadis, oases, and rivers of Egypt. One of them was a fish that the head of the Paris museum later said justified Napoleon’s entire Egyptian excursion. Of course, Jean-François Champol­lion, who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone, likely took exception to that description. With its scales, fins, and tail, the creature looked like a standard fish on the outside. Anatomical descriptions in Saint-Hilaire’s day entailed intricate dissections, frequently with a team of art­ists on hand to capture every important detail in beautiful, often colored lithographs. The top of the skull had two holes in the rear, close to the shoulder. That was strange enough, but the real surprise was in the esophagus. Normally, tracing the esophagus in a fish dissection is a pretty unremarkable affair, as it is a simple tube that leads from the mouth to the stomach. But this one was different. It had an air sac on either side. This kind of sac was known to science at the time. Swim bladders had been described in a number of different fish; even Goethe, the German poet and philosopher, once remarked on them. Present in both oceanic and freshwater species, these sacs fill with air and then deflate, offering neutral buoyancy as a fish navigates different depths of water. Like a submarine that expels air following the call to “dive, dive, dive,” the swim bladder’s air concentration changes, helping the animal move about at vary­ing depths and water pressures. More dissection revealed the real surprise: these air sacs were connected to the esophagus via a small duct. That little duct, a tiny connection from the air sac to the esophagus, had a large impact on Saint-Hilaire’s thinking. Watching these fish in the wild only confirmed what Saint-Hilaire inferred from their anatomy. They gulped air, pulling it in through the holes in the back of their heads. They even exhib­ited a form of synchronized air sucking, with large cohorts of them snorting in unison. Groups of these snuffling fish, known as bichirs, would often make other sounds, such as thumps or moans, with the swallowed air, presumably to find mates. The fish did something else unexpected. They breathed air. The sacs were filled with blood vessels, showing that the fish were using this system to get oxygen into their bloodstreams. And, more important, they breathed through the holes at the top of their heads, filling the sacs with air while their bodies remained in the water. Here was a fish that had both gills and an organ that allowed it to breathe air. Needless to say, this fish became a cause célèbre. A few decades after the Egyptian discovery, an Austrian team was sent on an expedition to explore the Amazon in celebra­tion of the marriage of an Austrian princess. The team collected insects, frogs, and plants: new species to name in honor of the royal family. Among the discoveries was a new fish that, like any fish, had both gills and fins. But inside it also had unmistakable vascular plumbing: not a simple air sac, but an organ loaded with the lobes, blood supply, and tissues characteristic of true human-like lungs. Here was a creature that bridged two great forms of life: fish and amphibians. To capture the confusion, the explorers gave it the name Lepidosiren paradoxa—Latin for “paradoxically scaled salamander.” Call them what you will—fish, amphibian, or something in between—these creatures had fins and gills to live in water but also lungs to breathe air. And they weren’t just one-offs. In 1860 still another fish with lungs was discovered in Queensland, Aus­tralia. This fish also had a very distinctive set of teeth. Shaped like a flat cookie cutter, such teeth were known from the fossil record from a species that was long extinct—an animal named Ceratodus found in rocks over 200 million years old. The impli­cation was clear: lunged, air-breathing fish were global and had been living on Planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. An aberrant observation can be a game changer for how we see the world. Fish lungs and swim bladders spawned a gen­eration of scientists interested in exploring the history of life by looking both at fossils and at living creatures. Fossils show what life looked like in the distant past, and living creatures reveal how anatomical structures work, as well as how organs develop from egg to adult. As we’ll see, this is a powerful approach. Linking studies of fossils and embryos was a fruitful area of inquiry for the natural scientists who followed Darwin. Bash­ford Dean (1867–1928) had an unusual distinction in academic circles—he is the only person ever to hold a curatorship at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, directly across Central Park, the American Museum of Natural History. He had two passions in life, fossil fish and battle armor. He founded the armor collection and displays at the Met, and he did the same for the fish collection at the Museum of Natural History. Befit­ting a person with such interests, he was a quirky individual. He designed his own armor and even took to wearing it on the streets of Manhattan. When he wasn’t donning medieval faulds, Bashford Dean was studying ancient fish. Somewhere locked inside the embryo’s transformation from egg to adult, he believed, were answers to the mysteries of history and the mechanism of current fish’s descent from ancestral species. Comparing fish embryos with fossils and reviewing the work in anatomy labs at the time, Dean saw that lungs and swim bladders look essentially the same during development. Both organs bud from the gut tube and both form air sacs. The major difference is that swim bladders develop on the top of the tube, near the spine, while lungs bud from the bottom, or belly side. Using these insights, Dean argued that swim bladders and lungs were different versions of the same organ, formed by the same developmental process. Indeed, some kind of air sac is present in virtually all fish but sharks. Like many ideas in science, Dean’s comparison has a long history. Its antecedents can be seen in the work of nineteenth-century Ger­man anatomists. But what do air sacs say about Mivart’s critique and Darwin’s response? A surprising number of fish can breathe air for extended peri­ods of time. The six-inch-long mudskipper can walk and live on the mud for over twenty-four hours. The aptly named climbing perch can wiggle from pond to pond as needed, sometimes even climbing branches and stepping over twigs in the process. But that perch is only a single species. Hundreds of species can gulp air when the concentration of oxygen in the water they inhabit declines. How do these fish do it? Some, like the mudskipper, absorb oxygen through their skin. Others have a special gas-exchange organ above their gills. Some catfish and other species absorb oxygen through their guts, gulping air like food, only to use it to breathe. And a num­ber of fish have paired lungs that look like our own. Lungfish live in water and breathe with their gills most of the time, but when the oxygen content of their stream is not sufficient to sup­port their metabolism, they will push to the surface and gulp air into their lungs. Air breathing is not some crazy exception in an oddball fish—it is the common state of affairs. Recently, researchers at Cornell University revisited the com­parison of swim bladders to lungs, using new genetic techniques. Their question: What genes help build fish swim bladders dur­ing development? In looking at the catalog of genes that are active in fish embryos, they found something that would have pleased both Dean and Darwin. The genes that are used to build swim bladders in fish are the same ones used to make lungs in both fish and people. Having an air sac is common to virtually all fish; some use them as lungs, while others use them as buoyancy devices. Here is where Darwin’s answer to Mivart becomes so pre­scient. DNA clearly shows that lungfish, Saint-Hilaire’s bichirs, and other fish with lungs are the closest living fish relatives to land-living creatures. Lungs aren’t some invention that abruptly came about as creatures evolved to walk. Fish were breathing air with lungs well before animals ever stepped onto terra firma. The invasion of land by descendants of fish did not originate a new organ—it changed the function of an organ that already existed. Moreover, virtually all fish have some kind of air sac, whether lung or swim bladder. Air sacs shifted from being used for a life in water to later enabling creatures to live and breathe on land. The change did not involve the origin of a new organ; instead the transformation was, as Darwin said more generally, “accompanied by a change of function.” Read more

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

⭐Some Assembly Required, Decoding 4 Billion Years of Life from Ancient Fossils to DNA, 2020,Neil ShubinHow did an ancient fish crawl onto land and begin terrestrial life? This has been a controversial question for biology since the time of Darwin. Darwin was prescient in saying major transitions are “often accompanied by a change of function”. Shubin answered the question in his 2005 book “Your Inner Fish”. Way before fish walked on land, they had developed a ballast system much like the ballast tanks on submarines. Connected to the esophagus of most fish are small air sacs. When a fish wants to be nearer the surface it pushes it’s mouth above water and inflates the air sacs. Maybe you have seen fish doing this? Over time fish in oxygen depleted bodies of water expanded these air sacs into alternate lungs. What happened to the gills once these fishlike animals began life on land? In the case of many mammals they formed the inner ear structure and in humans also the structure of the voice box.Since decoding the genome in 2000 progress in the science of genetics and paleontology has been nothing short of astounding. The cost of decoding a genome has decreased form the 3.8 billion in 2000 to just a few hundred dollars today. This has enabled the decoding of thousands of animal species, ancient human DNA, bacteria, and viruses. In the human genome we have discovered that only 2% is made up of our own genes. 10% is made up of ancient viruses that at one time infected our ancestors. 60% is duplications made up of “jumping genes gone wild”. A recent astounding discovery was that the genetic program that makes the human placenta is a genetic sequence from a virus incorporated into the mammalian genome in the transition from egg laying to placental birth. The protein that makes neuron connected memory possible also is derived from a virus invader. Amazingly both have components very similar to HIV virus. I guess we can’t be too negative on viruses, no?What is the other 28% of our genome? These are the are linear molecular programs, consisting of on-off switches, that design and construct all complex multicellular creatures. They operate much like a digital computer. Working as a field engineer on ballistic missile submarines in the 1960’s, I was responsible for a piece of gear that checked out the missile before launch. It consisted of thousands of discreet switches that ran a group of linear subroutine programs that verified each component was working before signaling successful completion and ready for launch. What the HOX and PAX genes do in building complex bodies is somewhat similar. Each structure such as a leg, fin or hand is created by a series of switches activated in linear order to produce the required proteins in an ordered sequence. What has been discovered is that these programs are remarkably similar in all creatures ranging from flies to fish to reptiles to humans. Using Crispr, a gene editing program, researchers have changed the locations of these programs resulting in bizarre outcomes such as legs growing out of a fly’s head. As Shubin eloquently relates: “The genome at every level resembles a musical score in which the same musical phrases are repeated in different ways to make vastly different songs. In fact, if nature was a composer, she would be one of the greatest copyright violators in history- everything from DNA to entire genes and proteins is a modified copy of something else”.What has been discovered in the last 20 years has changed the conception of humankind’s place in the universe. We can no longer be seen as somehow special or separate from the rest of life. We are a continuation of biological evolution as a product of and deeply connected to all life on Earth.As Shubin concludes “The poet William Blake wrote of seeing “the universe in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower”. When you know how to look, you can see billions of years inside the organs, cells, and DNA in all living things and relish our connections to the rest of life on the planet”.For those of you who have read “The Tangled Tree” by David Quammen you will love this book as a perfect follow on. While that book detailed the evolution of the complex cell, this book details the evolution of complex bodies. JACK

⭐A well-written science book for non-specialists in a field can be a joy to read. And this book is no exception. Shubin describes the micro-biological aspects of evolution and it’s fascinating. Genes and the proteins they manufacture are really amazing. It’s mind-boggling that such activity goes on and drives evolution. He gives nice descriptions of the early pioneers in this field. Chapters 7 and 8, in particular, are hugely interesting and well worth taking the time to savor. Recommended especially if you’re a fan of science.

⭐I’m reviewing and comparing two books on horizontal gene transfer (HGT). I’ve cross posted this also on the reviews for Quammen’s book.Shubin, Neil. 2020. Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA. New York: Pantheon Books.Quammen, David. 2018. The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.I was familiar with both authors. Shubin’s Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within sit on my bookshelf. I’ve enjoyed Quammen’s The Boilerplate Rhino, Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, and The Song of the Dodo of which I can find only the first, the later two lost to a thinning of my library.There is some overlap between the two books in both style and focus. Through historical narrative, the science emerges from stories about the scientists who made these discoveries. Both focus on the relatively new fields of horizontal gene transfer (HGT). While Quammen’s discussion is far more extensive, both introduce us to Lynn Margulis and her revolutionary idea that all multi-celled life – plants, animals, and fungus – evolved from a primitive eukaryote cell created when a bacteria entered an archaea and they started working as a team. Both also discuss the implications of Nobelist Barbara McClintock’s jumping genes.Shubin’s book is similar to his previous two. Science is explained in a 200 page narrative. Shubin takes a traditional Darwinian approach with considerable focus on multi-celled plants (e.g., corn) and animals (e.g., dinosaurs, flies, humans) and vertical gene evolution. The focus on HGT is on the impact of ancient viral and bacterial genes that entered the genome of more complex species. Ten percent of our human genome consists of these sequences. In some cases these insertions have little or no impact. But some are important. One HIV like insert known as Arc DNA appears in all land animals, fish don’t have it, and is used by our brains to enhance memories.Quammen’s book is unlike his previous ones. Those were collections of short “sort of” related topics. This book is long, detailed, and has one focus. It is all about HGT and largely ignores classic Darwinian generational evolution. It is far more focused on the scientists’ biographies than the science itself, especially Carl Woese, who is not even mentioned by Shubin. It isn’t completely devoid of the science. Rather the science comes largely in terms of the scientific debates surrounding theory and data.And there are some little nuggets on how HGT impacted multi-celled life, including humans. For example, a mystery is how female mammals can carry their young to term without their body rejecting the fetus as a foreign invader. It turns out we have genes called syncytin that create proteins that help build the placenta and allow food and waste to move between mother and fetus. The big surprise is that these genes did not evolve as “mistakes” during classic linear evolution. Rather, these genes were inserted into the mammal genome by invading retroviruses. A key reason viruses of any kind are able to flood your body is because they fool or turn off your immune response. In the case of syncytin genes, our genome tamed this feature that allows mammals to carry their young inside the female body.It is estimated that 8 to 10% of the human genome is of viral origin. While both books were interesting and worth a read, I’d like to read a book with less biography and more focus on what impact those viral insertion have contributed to our species.

⭐Well written flows well from beginning to end

⭐This book hit all the right spots for me. It was well written, contained a lot of interesting facts and ideas, told the stories of many interesting people and how they contributed to the understanding of evolution, but most importantly, got me looking at things I already knew in a new light. If you are interested in evolution and want to deepen your understanding this is an excellent book. If you sometimes have to argue with people who say ‘such-and such a thing could not possibly have evolved by natural selection, then it is an essential addition to your arsenal.

⭐I read this as part of my extra reading for my A level studies and I had tried to read a few similar books before but got very bored of them so I was apprehensive but I read the book so quickly! It was great and had so many interesting topics that I could easily write about in my personal statement for my zoology application.

⭐The book describes how parts of modern animals are repurposed from other parts of earlier animals.

⭐…explained in a way that just about anyone can understand. Brings you up to date with the current knowledge on this huge subject!

⭐I highly recommend this book – it’s remarkable how much a fresh approach to the science of evolution can reveal and explain.

Keywords

Free Download Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA in PDF format
Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA PDF Free Download
Download Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA 2020 PDF Free
Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA 2020 PDF Free Download
Download Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA PDF
Free Download Ebook Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA