Some Assembly Required

Starred review from October 28, 2019
Making complex scientific ideas both accessible to and enjoyable for the general public is a rare skill, but one that Shubin (Your Inner Fish), a University of Chicago biology professor, has mastered in his eloquent survey. He explores two complex and related evolutionary questions: how organisms bearing no immediately perceptible resemblance to each other—such as dinosaurs and birds—can be closely related; and how new traits—such as feathers or lungs—can appear. Writing for a lay audience, Shubin takes a historical perspective and describes the gradual accumulation of scientific knowledge. He explains that Darwin, without possessing the data available today, grasped that body parts evolve through “a change in function.” In recent years, genetic testing on fish with lunglike organs has revealed that “lungs aren’t some invention that abruptly came about as creatures evolved to walk.” Instead, lungs already existed in certain species of fish, but changed function when their descendants became land-dwellers. Shubin also covers discoveries about the genetic mechanisms behind such changes, such as studies pinpointing the specific areas in DNA that turn genes on and off during fetal development. This superb primer brings the intellectual excitement of the scientific endeavor to life in a way that both educates and entertains.

Starred review from December 1, 2019
A welcome new exploration of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. Shubin (Organismal Biology and Anatomy/Univ. of Chicago; The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body, 2013, etc.), provost of the Field Museum of Natural History, begins with a venerable anti-evolution argument. Evolution is supposed to occur when a new trait gives an organism an advantage. To live on land, an animal needs lungs, but lungs took time to evolve. What is the advantage of 1% of a lung....or 10%? Case closed? The author writes that "biological innovations never come about during the great transitions they are associated with. Feathers did not arise during the evolution of flight, nor did lungs and limbs come about during the transition to land....Massive change came about by repurposing ancient structures for new uses." Many full-time fish breathe air with rudimentary air-exchange organs. Most have air-filled sacs with other functions but lunglike possibilities. Case open, and Shubin explores it with his characteristic enthusiasm and clarity. Since well before Darwin, scientists traced life's development through fossils, which produced material but no explanation. Darwin's On the Origin of Species provided significant evidence for a mechanism: natural selection. This converted many--but not all--scientists, who still had no idea how it happened. Progress in genetics after 1900 led to tantalizing theories, but only during the past 50 years has DNA technology enabled scientists to understand and even tinker with evolution. Readers who assume that organisms change when their genes change are in for a jolt, as the author explains that a gene may simply multiply dozens or hundreds of times or jump wildly across the same genome. Since the beginning, viruses have broken into cells and joined cellular DNA, sometimes wreaking havoc but often remaining forever and doing good. Organisms themselves occasionally combine forces. Mitochondria inside every cell and the chlorophyll in plants were once free-living microbes that are still present in some DNA. A fascinating wild ride through the mechanics of evolution.

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Starred review from December 1, 2019
Shubin's (The Universe Within, 2013) third exhilarating excursion into the ways of evolution proceeds from five words in Darwin's reply to early critics, by a change in function. A sentence of Lillian Hellman's also informs it: Nothing . . . begins at the time you think it did. Heeding these watchwords, Shubin shows how, well before as well as after the discovery of DNA, evolutionary biologists discovered that sea creatures developed into land-dwellers by repurposing swim bladders to be lungs, that the bacterial genome is a factory in which genes code for protein production and molecular switches turn the genes on and off, that the analysis of monsters ?creatures with too many, too few, or misplaced appendages or parts?discloses how structural variation operates, that the genetic system evolved during the neverending combat between creatures and viruses, and that the genome is overrun with repetition. As he reveals these discoveries, along with other aspects of growth and change, Shubin also sketches the careers and achievements of dozens of great researchers, including women such as the long-neglected Julia Platt and Barbara McClintock. Shubin isn't the most prolific popular-science writer, but he is one of the best.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from January 1, 2020

Expanding on his previous two best sellers (Your Inner Fish; The Universe Within), Shubin (organismal biology & anatomy, Univ. of Chicago) shows how evidence from fossils combines with discoveries from DNA to promote new understandings of evolution. Taking a tour of the ideas of scientists over centuries, Shubin explains how creatures often did not develop new organs over time, as science once asserted, but rather repurposed existing organs to serve new functions. The author notes that changes in the timing of embryonic development, controlled by DNA, lead to differences in bodies. These changes, he says, act as recipes for bodies, encoded in DNA, passed along generations. Minor alterations in the code can have outsized ramifications, sometimes resulting in genetic defects or disease. Remnants of the molecules formed from these recipes can be traced through the ages, as clear a history as that found in fossils. Shubin explores deviations in genetic code, copycat codes, invasions of viruses and bacteria (co-opted for our use) into human DNA, and current experiments in genome editing. VERDICT In the end, the genetic constructions of all creatures are variations on a theme; we are all related. An engaging, must-read for anyone with an interest in evolution.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2019

Combining groundbreaking DNA technology with the study of fossils has given scientists a whole new view of evolution, and Shubin, the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago and the provost of the Field Museum of Natural History, can reliably explain the latest developments.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.