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.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of Evo Devo is the discovery that a small number of primitive genes led to the formation of fundamental organs and appendages in all animal forms. The gene that causes humans to form arms and legs is the same gene that causes birds and insects to form wings, and fish to form fins; similarly, one ancient gene has led to the creation of eyes across the animal kingdom. Changes in the way this ancient tool kit of genes is used have created all the diversity that surrounds us.

Sean Carroll is the ideal author to lead the curious on this intellectual adventure—he is the acknowledged leader of the field, and his seminal discoveries have been featured in Time and The New York Times. 16 pages of color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.

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

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 39 reviews)

Sean Carroll has done it again

This is a fantastic read; informative, yet laid-back enough to make it easy to digest. Carroll has a way of integrating just enough humor to keep you interested, without going overboard. If you're super science-savvy, you may be a bit bored in a few places where he goes over the basics of DNA structure, etc., but the fact that he starts at the bottom makes his books suitable for a much broader audience. If you want a good popular-science style read, this is your book.
October 25, 2008

Parsimony of Nature in Action -- As Darwin Stated

With all of the general intros into contemporary genetics and significance of mutant changes, it is sometimes difficult to obtain a book that has a specific hook incorporating a really unique theme. But with this book, we have the wonder of over 150 years since evolution was posited and Darwin is still teaching us new and wonderful things in the guise of evolutionary development.

In this book the new science of evolutionary development biology is explained as one of the core understandings of how natural selection actually works.

The key to this book is the genes that act as suppressor genes turn on or repress phenotypic variations in species or -- very importantly between species. Carroll describes how this new concentration of knowledge in biology has revealed the importance of tool box genes that allow variation to develop. Most importantly he proves that the actual amount/kind of these genes is very limited and that actual genes in one species are carried to other species and either expressed or not according to these "tool box" or Hox genes.

One wonderful carrolary idea is the parsimony of nature: nature does not have to develop one building block base pair at a time for changes to occur within a species. The "tool box" genes have been transferred between species and allow different expressions in different species, so it is not nessary to build up genotypic changes over time, base pair by base pair, species by species. The "tool box" genes allow function to be conveniently transferred to each developed speciers.

The implications are great. It means that evolution can unfold actually much, much faster than previously thought -- with species capable of development in very short time cycles. This principle of parsimony, which Darwin, with a prescience that is frankly freakishly outstanding, has been only verified within the past few years.

I only gave the book three stars because I think that at times it dragged a little and was redundant. Also while butterflys are most interesting and we do know a lot about them, I thought that there could be whole lot of other species variations that would be much more interesting... (perhaps another future book?).

Also, I think that he could had gone more into the implications of his theory more. For example this is further proof that crackpots such as Michael Bene are right out of it when they assume that every species has to evolve, base pair by base pair in order to achieve variation. I think that Carroll could have put him more in his place -- either that or just do not sully his wonderful prose buy even giving time to the views of Bene.

Anyway the latter comments may not really be fair -- but I include them because that is the way I thought whilst reading the book. In sum this is a very interesting book on a very unique but certainly in another 5-10 years, rather commonplace subject.

October 21, 2008

Super info - ok writing

This book is so full of interesting, amazing information - but the writing is very, very dry. I loved "Your Inner Fish" which overlaps the content of this book, but is much more engaging.
July 04, 2008

Interesting reading

This is an interesting take on evo-devo. I'd recommend it for the popular science reader (its stays in pretty shallow waters scientifically).
June 04, 2008

The "Butterfly Effect" in the genes

The best feature of this book is the fantastic sense of the complexity of the development of the organism from the genes. Sean shows with genius how the tiniest changes in a gene can lead to huge effects in the developing organism -- much like in Chaos theory (see the book "Chaos: making a new science" for example)in mathematics where complex systems are affected by the tiniest influences (i.e., a puff of air from a butterfly's wings) which can be magnified to change the entire face of a complex multi-determined system from what it would have been (i.e. weather patterns) over time. This book shows how and why all life is related, yet very different. For example, we share about 50% of our genes with a banana plant, and about 99% of our genes with Chimpanzees, yet we are very different physically and intellectually. This applies ESPECIALLY with that most unique of human characteristics -- our large and staggeringly complex brains. This can explain differences everything from mental diseases or IQ to personality and temperament differences. There are not really any other books out there like this. A MUST-READ in an emerging and exciting area of science. Stunning.
April 08, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
by Sean B. Carroll

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
by Neil Shubin

The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma
by Marc W. Kirschner, John C. Gerhart
by John Norton

From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design
by Sean Carroll, Jennifer Grenier, Scott Weatherbee

Coming to Life: How Genes Drive Development
by Christiane Nusslein-Volhard