Ch7. Adventures In Bodybuilding

This chapter was very informative compared to the other chapters, it got straight to the point and showed direct connections answering the "when, how, and why" of the development of the body. I found it very interesting that cells communicate amongst each other through passing messages one at a time. These messages allow the cells to cooperate together, spreading the regulatory rules of the organ. The way Shubin put it, "Until something out of the ordinary happens, for instance, we get a wart. The cells inside the wart aren't following the rules," (118) show that our body has very strict rules to maintain itself.

Shubin's timeline from today to 4.5 billion years ago really caught my attention. The first body seems to have developed 500 million years ago, which is a long time, but really isn't compared to the creation of Earth 4.5 billion years ago. When he compares the timeline to a calendar year, it is very fascinating to know that animals with heads are something that just recently happened. In general I thought the chapter was more about information and less about story than the other chapters.