Chapter 3: Handy Genes

Just by reading the title, I knew what the chapter was going to be about, how genes relate to the hands. When Shubin explains how the portion of the ZPA tissue is moved, it causes the fingers to be duplicated. When I read this, I was shocked by how only a portion of the tissue of the limb controls the develpment of the limb. I would think that if you removed a part of the tissue of the limb, the animal will develop into an animal with a limb that has some less tissue. The picture that illustrated what happened looked very creepy (imagining a chicken with multiple fingers). I had no idea that the ZPA has such a big impact on how the animal will look in the end. Even though I didn't like the fact that they were messing with the nature of the animals, it felt vital to know our true origin. In addition, the discovery of the Sonic hedgehog gene shows us how all living creatures are very similar to one another. How the Sonic headgehog gene experiment reacted in the skate surprised me very much. It had the same effect as in the chicken wing! It seems that the same genes are just programmed differently in different species, but there are ways to show how we all come use the same idea to shape what we are. I'm looking forward to seeing how farther Shubin goes in the next chapter.