Chapter Three: Handy Genes aka ancient genes :)

chapter Three was a bit confusing, but I found it scientifically interesting. I was intrigued by the fact that someone can change a fin to look like a humans hand. Shubin stated " What if you could do an experiment in which you treated the embryo of a fish with various chemicals and actually changed its body, making part of its fin look like a hand? (45). And he goes on about how maybe our genes are probably the genes that made a fishes fin. Interesting, but it is also kind of weird that a humans hand can be a fishes fin. Shubin doesn't mean it literally but still, I mean...that's cool.

The last sentence of the chapter states " The connections among living creatures run deep(59)". Throughout the chapter Shubin proves this point step by step; however, confusing as this chapter may be, it was still interesting how Shubin developed his point.
On page 49, it discusses necessary components that are needed to develop our bones and it fascinated me how one single little component can change everything. The Diagram on page 50 shows how a little patch of tissue called the ZPA causes the fingers to be duplicated. In other matters, if one single little thing goes wrong it can mess up everything but in animals if the ZPA is switched it creates the animals normal figure.
It is compelling that our genes are similar to that of fishes aka "ancient genes".
-Ashima Gore