Endless Forms Most Beautiful

"Sean Carroll is a developmental biologist. He uses molecular techniques to study the ways in which the embryo develops and uses specialised tissues and structures. His book actually comes, he claims, from a question one of his children asked him. The question was: Is the zebra a white animal with black stripes, or a black animal with white stripes? Which when you think about it is a very interesting question. This field in which he is a pioneer is sometimes called “evo devo”. It has indeed become a red-hot field, and is properly known as evolutionary developmental biology. It has become a hot field because the molecular tools by which we analyse development have now got to the point where we can merge them with the study of transformation in fossils – in terms of the way in which certain organisms have developed in structure and patterns. Sean Carroll popularises – and I mean that in the very best sense – some of the most difficult and interesting findings in evolutionary developmental biology. He explains, in a very easy to understand way, the way in which intricate patterns in butterflies come about through the interaction of just a handful of genes, and how very slight changes in some of those genes can result in quite different patterns. It is top-notch research biology. The title of his book comes from the final chapter of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species , which has the phrase: “From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful, most wonderful, have been, and are being, evolved.” If a reader wants to know what is going on in molecular biology that is expanding our understanding of the theory of evolution, you could do no better than to read Sean Carroll’s book."