Evolution in Minutes by Darren Naish

Author:Darren Naish [Naish, Darren]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2017-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

Evo-devo

A combined understanding of the fossil history of modern

organisms, the development of their embryos, and the genetics that control their development has resulted in a field known as ‘evolutionary development biology’, or ‘evo-devo’ for short. It basically combines everything we know about the evolutionary past of an organism in order to understand its development as a living organism. It shows how the pattern of evolution has been shaped by the process of development. If we understand that certain body parts, for example, appear in a given developmental sequence, we gain insight into evolutionary history.

The term ‘evo-devo’ is certainly modern; as a distinct discipline, the field itself is generally regarded as having arisen since the 1990s. The 1980s discovery of homeobox genes (see page 210) was among the key events that helped establish evo-devo as a distinct field of research, as was the sequencing of entire genomes. The field as a whole, however, has roots that go all the way back to the 19th century.

220 GENETICS AND MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

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