Ch. 3: Handy Genes

Reading onto chapter three, " Handy Genes", I learned that DNA is probably the most important part to the human body because technically that is what the whole human/animal body is made up of. For example every cell in the body contains a nucleus and in the nucleus there lay a bunch of DNA stands. One quote that truly explained the meaning to me was," Like a concierto composed of individual notes played by many instruments, our bodies are a composition of individual genes turning on and off inside each cell during our development" (Shubin, 46). Its crazy to think the diagram on page 48 shows that, that is how a chickens limb/wing is developed. Before reading that i knew that when an animals or humans are conceived they literally start off as nothing and just begin to grow, but after seeing the diagram on page 48 it turns into full reality seeing that the bones literally just grew into the skin creating a wing. Moving on, I would have never guessed that the humans and sharks would share any possible features but it turned out that sharks have "limbs" too, even though their limbs are made of cartilage instead of bone. I am only on chapter three and I have learned ALOT, I have a feeling that this novel will teach us tons more:)...

Neha Modha