Molecular Origins of Brain and Body Geometry

Anglický jazyk

Molecular Origins of Brain and Body Geometry

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O knihe

New concepts arise in science when apparently unrelated fields of knowledge are put together in a coherent way. The recent results in molecular biology allow to explain the emergence of body patterns in animals that before could not be understood by zoologists.
There are no "fancy curiosities" in nature. Every pattern is a product of a molecular cascade originating in genes and a living organism arises from the collaboration of these genes with the outer physical environment.
Tropical fishes are as startling in their colors and geometric circles as peacocks. Tortoises are covered with the most regular triangles, squares and concentric circles that can be green, brown or yellow. Parallel scarlet bands are placed side by side of black ones along the body of snakes. Zebras and giraffes have patterns which are lessons in geometry, with their transversal and longitudinal stripes, their circles and other geometric figures. Monkeys, like the mandrills, have a spectacularly colored face scarlet nose with blue parallel flanges and yellow beard.
All this geometry turns out to be highly molecular. The genes are many and have been DNA sequenced. Besides they not only deal with the coloration of the body but with the development of the brain and the embryonic process. A precise scenario of molecular events unravels in the vertebrates.
It may seem far-fetched, but the search for the origin of this geometry made it mandatory to study the evolution of matter and the origin of the brain. It turned out that matter from its onset is pervaded by geometry and that the brain is also a prisoner of this ordered construction. Moreover, the brain is capable of altering the body geometry and the geometry of the environment changes the brain.
Nothing spectacular occurred when the brain arrived in evolution. Not only it came after the eye, which had already established itself long ago, but i