Week 2, Comments on Evo-Devo

I have actually studied a lot of evolution and a lot of evolutionary theory and evo-devo is completely new to me. It really makes me wonder why I never heard about it during my undergrad and wether that had anything to do with the department not wanting us to learn about it (which is always one of those scary possibilities). In terms of the theory itself, it sounds really fascinating and seems to me to make a lot of sense. It has always struck me that development is scientifically and biologically the one crucial moment of becoming a distinct member of a species...I think the whole of creation is made up from a few relatively simple building blocks (like genes), and the way we get such an explosion of diversity comes from the interaction and construction of these building blocks. It also sounds fascinating to know how the whole development mechanism works, and how genes are "turned on and off" to create everything we see around us.