Our eyes help us judge and take in everything around us, such small organs with a huge impact. At first, all of Shubin's descriptions of the different components of an eye are pretty basic. It was almost like a review of the function of a human eye as I read through the beginning of the chapter. Then as he begins to focus on the light-gathering molecules, tissues, and genes, it got me hooked onto this evolution point he's been trying to make.
The idea with the light-gathering molecules made sense to me because I know we all experience going from a room filled with lights on to a room with the lights turned off and we can see or almost feel our eyes adjust to the new setting.
Though the whole thing with the tissues and genes actually got the brain juices actually flowing. It's kind of ironic because the heading for these two sections sound really obvious but you really have to think and analyze what Shubin is trying to get at with the discoveries of these eye mutations. Compared to the light-gathering molecules, it was sounded like something more complicated but it was really we experience every day.
When Shubin was describing the mutations with the eyeless gene it got me so interested that I had to share it with my little sister. She was absolutely disgusted and just thinking about it also gave me the goosebumps. But it was familiar when he brought up that other scientists found a way of messing with genes just as mentioned earlier in the book. And finding eyes on different parts of the mice or fly was simply weird but fascinating.
-Briana Fauni
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