The Best Laid (Body) Plans

This Chapter we are shown the similarities of many different animals including humans. We looked just like other developing embryos and as a result many questions were raised in my head. Then how do we become humans and they become fish? Where does it change? Could we change something in the way we develop and become fish instead? Just like Neil and many other scientists I am now thinking how to discover the answer. What was really fascinating in this chapter to me was that if a small tissue was removed and transferred to another developing egg that egg would form into twins. This would make it possible for twins to be created out of every fertilized egg. What interested me most was that if a patch of tissue was removed from a chicken and grafted to a salamander you would get a twinned salamander instead of a chicken and a fish. It shows that the DNA of the salamander was able to use the chicken tissue to make its twin. Showing that the connection is deep enough to take the tissue as its own.

Chapter 6: The Best-Laid (Body) Plans

What surprised me was how the three germ layers that Mr. Shubin introduces are the basic foundations for the growth and development of almost every animal--or I guess all of them. As I was reading, especially about the formation of the tubes after conception--particularly the tube inside the tube part--I was thinking, "Man, I wish the dude would put up pictures of this tube 'cause this is seriously confusing." To my surprise, the picture was on the next page. Talk about convenience! Then I realized that the tube in the tube is our digestive tract and how there's just a tube that runs down through our body. Until then, I was thinking that we were just a small chunk of cells. I would have never guessed right away that we become tubed-tubes.

The way that flies' genes and our genes are parallel and so similar makes me wonder what would happen if we played around with our genes to make us end up having legs coming out of our heads. But that would be cruel, and I'm sure flies would think of us as cruel, too. hahaha.

The turning on/off of the genes is quite the clever contraption. It's an ingenious "thing" that makes our bodies so ideal.

In the Anemone section, is Mr. Shubin saying that sea anemones aren't as developed as we have? That we, as we were anemones, have gone major reconstruction, just as the nerve cables in our heads? And does Noggin just give embryos extra structure?