Chapter 6: The Best-Laid (Body) Plans

This topic alone about how our body is assembled and what is in charge of building what in a creature can be mind twisting, but Shubin explained the process in a very intersting and easy to understand chapter. I would have never thought that, "All organs in the chicken can be traced to one of three layers of tissue in the developing embryo" (99). Its amazing to see that these three layers or germ layers can be found in every species which shows how undifferent creatures are in the early stages of life. I thought that throughout this entire chapter, the organizer intrigued me the most. Learning how the Organizer could help form an entire body plan could only make me think about the many cartoons that have monsters with multiple heads and limbs. I could not believe what I read about hox genes in flies and people. We look entirely different but in reality theres more connections than I could imagine. My favorite part from this chapter was the connection between a human and a sea anemone. By the looks of it, sea anemones don't share eyes, bones, a heart and several others, but we do share the belly-to-back genes. Even though by appearance creatures from all ranges of life seem to share no connections with each other, inside, there's more interconnections than we can ever imagine.