Website review: Evolution, From Fins to Wings - Nat...
nutmeg discovered this in Evolution
•15 reviews since Oct 18, 2006
evolution, science, carl-zimmer
•nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0611/feature4/
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Reviews of this website
nutmeg discovered 21 months ago
"Flowers, flagella, feathers. Life is rife with complex features--structures and systems made up of many interacting parts. National Geographic magazine asked me to take a tour of complexity in life and report on the latest research on how it evolved. What struck me over and over again was how scientists studying everything from bacteria to humans are drawn back to the same concepts--making new copies of old parts, for example, or borrowing parts of one complex trait to evolve a new one. And in each case, complexity opens up the way to diversity, because something many parts can be rearranged in many ways. There's not yet a general theory for the evolution of complexity, but scientists are certainly converging on some of the same themes." (Carl Zimmer - commenting about his essay in The Loom) Some interesting photos accompany the feature.
- ericthehamster rated 17 months ago
- A fascinating in-depth essay looking at evolutionary processes, and how the various structures in life came about (and in some cases, subsequently discarded). Worth taking time to read. From the page: "The father of evolution was a nervous parent. Few things worried Charles Darwin more than the challenge of explaining how nature's most complex structures, such as the eye, came to be. "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder," he wrote to a friend in 1860. Today biologists are beginning to understand the origins of life's complexity--the exquisite optical mechanism of the eye, the masterly engineering of the arm, the architecture of a flower or a feather, the choreography that allows trillions of cells to cooperate in a single organism. The fundamental answer is clear: In one way or another, all these wonders evolved. "The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple," says Howard Berg, a Harvard researcher who has spent much of the past 40 years studying one of the humbler examples of nature's complexity, the spinning tail of common bacteria. "The idea is simply that you fiddle around and you change something and then you ask, Does it improve my survival or not? And if it doesn't, then those individuals die and that idea goes away. And if it does, then those individuals succeed, and you keep fiddling around, improving. It's an enormously powerful technique." With thanks to Nutmeg for this!
- LallaHabiba rated 19 months ago
- By Carl Zimmer Photographs by Rosamond Purcell Scientists are tracing the steps through which evolution forged its successes. They're finding that the same genetic tool kit can build structures both simple and complex. The father of evolution was a nervous parent. Few things worried Charles Darwin more than the challenge of explaining how nature's most complex structures, such as the eye, came to be. "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder," he wrote to a friend in 1860. Today biologists are beginning to understand the origins of life's complexity--the exquisite optical mechanism of the eye, the masterly engineering of the arm, the architecture of a flower or a feather, the choreography that allows trillions of cells to cooperate in a single organism. The fundamental answer is clear: In one way or another, all these wonders evolved. "The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple," says Howard Berg, a Harvard researcher who has spent much of the past 40 years studying one of the humbler examples of nature's complexity, the spinning tail of common bacteria. "The idea is simply that you fiddle around and you change something and then you ask, Does it improve my survival or not? And if it doesn't, then those individuals die and that idea goes away. And if it does, then those individuals succeed, and you keep fiddling around, improving. It's an enormously powerful technique."...
- Mayamoi rated 20 months ago
- From the page 'A FIN IS A LIMB IS A WING': ""The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple," says Howard Berg, a Harvard researcher who has spent much of the past 40 years studying one of the humbler examples of nature's complexity, the spinning tail of common bacteria."
- nooner rated 21 months ago
- The never ending drive to prove the happenstances of evolution as the only truth and as something other than God.
- DMAlterman rated 21 months ago
- Scientists are tracing the steps through which evolution forged its successes. They're finding that the same genetic tool kit can build structures both simple and complex.
- kiribird2 rated 21 months ago
- Scientists still have a long way to go in understanding the evolution of complexity, which isn't surprising since many of life's devices evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. Nevertheless, new discoveries are revealing the steps by which complex structures developed from simple beginnings. Through it all, scientists keep rediscovering a few key rules. One is that a complex structure can evolve through a series of simpler intermediates. Another is that nature is thrifty, modifying old genes for new uses and even reusing the same genes in new ways, to build something more elaborate. Sean Carroll, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, likens the body-building genes to construction workers. "If you walked past a construction site at 6 p.m. every day, you'd say, Wow, it's a miracle--the building is building itself. But if you sat there all day and saw the workers and the tools, you'd understand how it was put together. We can now see the workers and the machinery. And the same machinery and workers can build any structure." A limb, a feather, or a flower is a marvel, but not a miracle.
- Metamorphosis rated 21 months ago
- A nice article on evolution, (good find nutmeg)
- laodan rated 21 months ago
- Same genetic tool kit builds simple or complex structures. via Nutmeg, in National Geographic by Carl Zimmer. "The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple," says Howard Berg, a Harvard researcher who has spent much of the past 40 years studying one of the humbler examples of nature's complexity, the spinning tail of common bacteria. "The idea is simply that you fiddle around and you change something and then you ask, Does it improve my survival or not? And if it doesn't, then those individuals die and that idea goes away. And if it does, then those individuals succeed, and you keep fiddling around, improving. It's an enormously powerful technique." Evolution, ruthless and practical, is equally capable of building the most wonderful structures and tossing them aside when they're no longer needed. URL: Same genetic tool kit builds simple or complex structures. URL: Charles Darwin Archive Launched
Function seems to be the name of the game. A function of survival to be more correct. That's what biologists and other scientists are discovering step by step and we can see the time when historical tables of evolution will be taught in schools... and accepted by all as reality. But what is the engine that brews ever more complexity? Why can life not satisfy itself with what it already gained? Does the answer to this question lay in bio-chemistry?
- Same genetic tool kit builds simple or complex structures. via Nutmeg, in National Geographic by Carl Zimmer. "The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple," says Howard Berg, a Harvard researcher who has spent much of the past 40 years studying one of the humbler examples of nature's complexity, the spinning tail of common bacteria. "The idea is simply that you fiddle around and you change something and then you ask, Does it improve my survival or not? And if it doesn't, then those individuals die and that idea goes away. And if it does, then those individuals succeed, and you keep fiddling around, improving. It's an enormously powerful technique." Evolution, ruthless and practical, is equally capable of building the most wonderful structures and tossing them aside when they're no longer needed. URL: Same genetic tool kit builds simple or complex structures. URL: Charles Darwin Archive Launched
