8, 9, 10, 11) Making Scents ~ The Meaning of It All

Chapter 8 (summary of my last post I suppose) was about the science behind our smelling. I knew he was going to mention fish and then magically tell us we have the same genes as they do to develop smell, too. Also never knew that 3% of our genome is dedicated to smell, but we don't use it all. Interesting how we swapped that for vision and why my dog can probably smell better than I can.

Moving on, chapter 9 was about our eyes and vision. Sure it was cool learning about the different steps light goes through for our brains to process and learning about light-gathering molecules (cones and rods?), but the thing that appealed to me the most in this chapter was Walter Gehring's experiment. Sure, altering DNA wasn't a shocker now that I'm this far in this book but after Shubin mentioned that those flies had eyes on the antennas, that left me with a creepy picture in my head. Once he mentioned Pax 6, the eyeless gene, being transferred from a mouse to a fly, the results weren't that surprising either. Of course it would develop a regular fly eye. Of course. What a small world.

Chapter 10, I think at this point, Shubin got lazy coming up with creative chapter titles. What was interesting about this chapter was that I found a typo! (Page 166, bottom, "without our even thinking about it") No, the topic that I found most interesting was when Shubin talked about what happens when an individual becomes intoxicated with alcohol. I had former knowledge of that our ears had relation to our balance and therefore with alcohol, but I actually never knew how that happened, and now, I do. Seemed like I was getting a part of Shark Week on this chapter, with Shubin talking about how sharks detect the flow of water.

Finally, the last chapter. Chapter 11 was pretty interesting overall. It was surprising to learn about the origins of different human diseases and conditions, such as hernias and hiccups. I liked how he brought back his sense of humor by making me imagine a beautiful picture of doing the Pledge of Allegiance with our gonads in our chest area. And wrapping everything up, I finally see that our relations to other organisms help us understand ourselves, with the way we work and the diseases that we get.

So overall, I thought this book was pretty fun and interesting to read. I'll admit, like every book, things go dry sometimes and I always lose motivation to read but in the end, I finished the book so that's all I care about. One down, a thousand more to go.

- Keith Choison