Product Description

“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. .

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101825 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780393327793
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
"Every animal form is the product of two processes--development from an egg and evolution from its ancestors," writes Sean B. Carroll in his introduction to Endless Forms Most Beautiful. The new science of "evo devo"--or evolutionary developmental biology--examines the relationships between those two processes, embryonic development and evolutionary changes, despite their radically different time scales. Carroll first offers a recap of how genes express themselves in a growing embryo, then peers into the life histories of real-life examples to explain how those genes have changed (or not changed) over millions of years of evolution. Paraphrasing Thomas Huxley, he asks us to consider evolution and development as two sides of the same coin.

We may marvel at the process of an egg becoming an adult, but we accept it as an everyday fact. It is merely then a lack of imagination to fail to grasp how changes in this process that assimilated over long periods of time, far longer than the span of human experience, shape life's diversity."

The book's second half is where Carroll really gets at the meat of evo devo, explaining how regulatory genes control such mysteries as individual and population changes in butterfly's spots, jaguar fur, and hominid skulls. Evo devo is one of the hottest areas of study in 21st-century biology, and Carroll's outline of the field is a great place to start understanding it. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly
Cobb County textbook stickers aside, evolutionary natural selection offers a pretty straightforward explanation for the forward march of species through history; a mutation that better equips a given organism to survive is passed along to its heirs, becoming more common as successive generations flourish. The actual process by which mutations happen, however, was far more mysterious until scientists turned to the study of evolutionary development (known by the somewhat unfortunate moniker "Evo Devo"). One such scientist is Carroll, a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who guides us along the broad contours of development ("the process through which a single-celled egg gives rise to a complex, multibillion-celled animal") and the ways in which its study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms of evolution. He explains in concrete terms how small changes in a species's genetic code of a given species can lead to dramatic differences in physiology is the "missing piece" of evolutionary theory, Carroll argues. The book is as much a salvo in the continuing battles between creationists and evolutionists as it is a popularization of science, and Carroll combines clear writing with the deep knowledge gained from a lifetime of genetics research, first laying out the principles of evolutionary development and then showing us how they can explain both the progression of species in the fossil record and outliers like a six-fingered baseball pitcher. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Scientific American
It would be hard to imagine two more different timescales in the lives of organisms than development--the transformation of an embryo to an adult within a single generation--and evolution--the modification and transformation of organisms between generations that reach back 600 million years. Yet for the past two centuries, natural philosophers, morphologists and biologists have asked whether there is a fundamental relationship between development (ontogeny) and evolution (phylogeny). There is, and it finds expression in the thriving discipline of evolutionary developmental biology (evo devo, as it has been called since the early 1990s). Endless Forms Most Beautiful examines one of the most exciting aspects of evo devo--the incorporation of molecular biology that followed the discovery of classes of conserved regulatory (developmental, or "switching") genes: the homeobox, or Hox, genes. Carroll, who is a professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, writes in a lively style, peppering the book with endlessly fascinating examples that are beautifully illustrated by color and black-and-white drawings and photographs. To appreciate where this latest book devoted to evo devo is situated in the long history of the discipline, we need to go back almost 200 years. The study of embryonic stages across the animal kingdom--comparative embryology--flourished from 1830 on. Consequently, when On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, Charles Darwin knew that the embryos of all invertebrates (worms, sea urchins, lobsters) and vertebrates (fish, serpents, birds, mammals) share embryonic stages so similar (which is to say, so conserved throughout evolution) that the same names can be given to equivalent stages in different organisms. Darwin also knew that early embryonic development is based on similar layers of cells and similar patterns of cell movement that generate the forms of embryos and of their organ systems. He embraced this community of embryonic development. Indeed, it could be argued that evo devo (then known as evolutionary embryology) was born when Darwin concluded that the study of embryos would provide the best evidence for evolution. Darwin's perception was given a theoretical basis and evo devo its first theory when Ernst Haeckel proposed that because ontogeny (development) recapitulates phylogeny (evolutionary history), evolution could be studied in embryos. Technological advances in histological sectioning and staining made simultaneously in the 1860s and 1870s enabled biologists to compare the embryos of different organisms. Though false in its strictest form, Haeckel's theory lured most morphologists into abandoning the study of adult organisms in favor of embryos--literally to seek evolution in embryos. History does repeat itself; 100 years later a theory of how the body plan of a fruit fly is established, coupled with technological advances, ushered in the molecular phase of evo devo evaluated by Carroll. As Carroll discusses in his book (the title of which comes from the last lines of The Origin of Species), the discovery of Mendelian genetics in 1900, and soon after of the gene as the unit of heredity, thrust a wedge between development and evolution. Genes were now what mattered in evolution; embryos were merely the vehicles that carried genes from one generation to the next. Embryology was divorced from evolution, devo from evo. Even the discovery in the 1950s of the nature and role of DNA did not bring them back together. In the late 1970s, however, all began to change as several revolutions in theory and technology produced a mind shift as dramatic as the one that followed Darwin's The Origin of Species. New methods for generating phylogenetic relationships brought comparative embryology back to the forefront; now we can assess the direction of evolutionary changes in development. When we find a species of frog that has lost the tadpole stage from its life cycle--a remarkable evolutionary change in form and function--we can determine whether that loss was an early or late event in the evolution of frogs. Stephen Jay Gould's seminal book Ontogeny and Phylogeny (1977) rekindled interest in 19th-century evolutionary embryology and resurrected an old idea--heterochrony, change in the timing of development in a descendant relative to an ancestor--in a form that could be tested. Important as these developments were, they were carried out against the then current wisdom that organisms differ because they possess unique genes not found in other organisms--lobster genes for lobsters, human genes for humans, and so forth. The discovery of homeobox genes turned this approach upside down and inside out. The body plans of lobsters and humans, flies and fish, barnacles and mice, are initiated using the same families of genes that are conserved across the animal kingdom. The consequences of this discovery are the stuff of the first half of Endless Forms Most Beautiful, in which Carroll presents homeobox genes as the switches that contain the fundamental information required to make a fly's eye or a human hand. The second half of the book explores what Carroll calls "the making of animal diversity," beginning with animal life as exemplified in the justly famous 500-million-year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale formation in British Columbia. Carroll is concerned with evolutionary tinkering with genetic switches and the production of patterns in nature--spots on butterfly wings, stripes on zebras. He devotes less attention to the downstream gene cascades and gene networks that allow similar signaling genes to initiate, for example, the wing of a bird or a human arm. Nor are the cells and cellular processes from which the endless forms are constructed given prominence. Consequently, statements such as "the anatomy of animal bodies is really encoded and built ... by constellations of switches distributed all over the genome" could be taken to mean that switching genes contain all the information required to generate form. Were that true there would be no need for evo devo; indeed, there would be no development. It would all be geno evo. But, as Carroll demonstrates, "the evolution of form occurs through changes in development," which is precisely why evo devo is so central to understanding how animals have been and are being evolved.

Brian K. Hall is George S. Campbell Professor of Biology and a University Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is author of Evolutionary Developmental Biology and of Bones and Cartilage: Developmental and Evolutionary Skeletal Biology, among other books, and co-editor with Benedikt Hallgrímsson of the forthcoming Variation: A Central Concept in Biology.

---

Customer Reviews

Darwin Updated
Classical experimental and comparative embryology is a field that has fallen on hard times until recently. When I attended the University of Arizona there was a full blown course in embryology, both descriptive and experimental. By the time I was a graduate student at the same institution the course had been rolled into Organismic Biology in which all of embryology was loaded into a third of a semester. In essence developmental biology in relation to evolutionary studies gave way to molecular. Still some pretty good work went on in the background that impinged on development and was to result in the discovery of HOX genes. HOX genes (or homeotic genes) proved to be the "organizer" that was postulated by various experimental embryologists such as Spemann. Even more astoundingly they proved to be pretty much the same, no matter which organism was being studied. HOX genes in humans were essentially identical to those of insects!

This remarkable fact offers proof for the idea that all life is related and that development is a key factor in evolution. In "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" Sean B. Carroll explains the significance of such discoveries as the genetic "tool kit" (including HOX genes) on our understanding of evolution and of development. Indeed, this is a fascinating story that has already caused me to rethink some of my understanding of evolutionary principles.

We live in an amazing world in an amazing universe. The genetic material made up of DNA is a very remarkable material. What other materials could have developed huge numbers of organisms (as many as 30 million extant) that vary from zebras to sulfur bacteria? Yet that complexity appears to have developed from a very simple beginning.

Carroll was influenced by Steven J. Gould in his interest in biology, but he does not flinch from disagreeing with Gould about contingency. Carroll says that if the tape of evolution were run again, pretty much the same thing would have happened. I think that I may have to agree to a point (although not as far as Simon Conway Morris goes with it). However, certain alterations in earth history might still have caused a radical change in the outcome, as in the development of a completely water covered planet or a very large asteroid strike (larger that the one that apparently killed the dinosaurs except birds). At the same time not all evolved faunas that developed in isolation from each other resemble each other exactly. The marsupials of Australia, for example, had a number of forms similar to placental mammals. However, there was no exact analog to the kangaroo outside of Australia or of hoofed animals in Australia (giant wombats don't have hooves). I agree faunas can be similar, but not necessarily identical and that intelligent life may be inevitable, but may not necessarily have looked like us or even evolved from mammals.

That said, evo-devo, as the evolutionary development researchers call it, has much to offer and it certainly cannot be dismissed. This is an exciting time to be involved with evolutionary biology, despite the creationist (or more sophisticated "Intelligent Design") attack on the whole idea.

This is an excellent introduction to the excitement of a continuing unfolding of evolutionary thought. I recommend it highly.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: Evo Devo Popularized
Despite vast differences in form and function common principles coordinate animal development from a single fertilized egg. Master genes that control development are found across widely divergent species - Drosophila fruit flies and humans share a deep genetic legacy - many of the genes identified as controllers of vertebrate development were originally discovered in these flies.

Multicellular plants and animals are essentially societies of cells that vary in configuration and complexity. Darwinian evolution shaped these multitudinous forms as a result of small changes in offspring and natural selection of those best adapted to their environment. Variation arises from mutations in genes that control how cells in developing embryos behave. This tight linkage between evolution and development lies at the heart of the questions evo devo, shorthand for evolutionary developmental biology, is attempting to answer. Sean B. Carroll is perfectly positioned to explain evo devo, and his comprehensive understanding illuminates "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom."

When and where genes are expressed determines how animals develop. The control regions of these genes - switches that change existing patterns of gene activity into new patterns - are crucial and a single gene can have many control regions. This flexibility underlies the fact that 95% of genes coding for proteins are similar in humans and mice. Evolution of control regions has made us human - and different from our primate ancestors.

Drosophila is utilized to explain the basic developmental tool kit shared by all animals. Carroll introduces the master Hox genes and intercellular signaling molecules such as proteins specified by hedgehog genes. The economy of signaling proteins utilized during development is also emphasized - the same molecules can be employed multiple times since cells respond differently according to their genetic characteristics and developmental history. Carroll also illustrates how individual animals are made up of similar parts - modular construction plays an important role in evolution. Structures ranging from vertebrae to spots on butterfly wings are artfully presented to drive this point home.

Complex animals arose in the Vendian period (650 - 543 MYA). During the Cambrian (543 - 490 MYA) animals with hard body parts enter the fossil record. Evo devo shows that genes responsible for Cambrian animals were plausibly derived from Vendian precursors. Cambrian arthropod dominance is probably due to Hox genes that specify different body segments and the corresponding appendages that formed their bodies. Carroll explores how the number of distinct appendage types increased - the relative shifting of Hox genes could have lead to the ancestral biramous (forked) limb that eventually diversified into structures ranging from gills to wings.

Butterfly spots are a beautiful and clever example of evolutionary tinkering. Each spot appears to evolve its shape, color and size independently of other elements. Evolution has tinkered not only with the qualities of each spot, but with the making of the spot itself. Carroll's group discovered that at the center of each spot the gene Distal-less - a key gene controlling the distal development of appendages such as insect limbs - is expressed and initiates spot development.

Carroll also addresses creationists - the bizarre bibliolaters who think Flintstones reruns on late night TV are documentaries - by pointing out the importance of evolution and evo devo to science and human knowledge in general. The PR campaign known as Intelligent Design is similarly debunked as irreducibly insipid. Science is full of mysteries, that is why there are still employment opportunities for scientists.

After reading this important book try From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design by Sean B. Carroll, Grenier, and Weatherby for a more detailed discussion or The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma by Kirschner and Gerhart - who introduce "facilitated variation" based on evo devo insights to explain the evolution of complexity and novelty.

How Human Beings Began...
Ever since high school I've been looking for ways to branch out my fascination and interest from physics to biology. I have read the books and collections of essays by Stephen Gould and loved them, but nothing else has so caught my attention until THIS book.

Sean B. Carroll (there's more than one Sean Carroll out there) does a fine job showing how insect and vertebrate forms are built. More than that, he shows how they are fundamentally related WAY back in the past. Even more controversial than humans being related to chimps, we're related to, say..., lobsters!

What's cool is these conclusions are based on repeatable experimental evidence of the makeup of DNA, genes, chromosomes etc. Carroll makes a nice analogy between the vast amount of DNA strands that are NOT expressed in individual forms and the vast amount of matter in the universe that is NOT expressed as visible stars and galaxies. (OK, so maybe I STILL like physics a little more, but I'm making progress!)

Carroll nicely acknowledges Gould's contributions to the popularization of better public understanding of evolution (e.g., Wonderful Life) and further extends the discussion of Darwin. Trying to understand life without evolution is like trying to understand the universe without gravity. But Carroll moves the discussion from anecdotes to evidence. I like that!

I hope to see MUCH more on this new field of evolutionary developmental biology. As much as I am interested in how the universe began (and where it's going), I am interested in how human beings began and where THEY might be going.