What I’m listening to right now.
A Capella Science, “Evo-Devo (Despacito Biology Parody).” This song is truly awesome. It’s evolutionary biology. It’s poetry. It’s music. It’s all in a package, like the miracle of life, itself. For the prototype of which this song is a “parody,” see here.
Lyrics.
EVO-DEVO
Huxley
B. Mac.
Oh Carroll, Carroll
Gould, Stephen Jay yeah
D-D-D-D-Davidson and Peter
See
One cell divide and decide on a thousand fates
Did you ever figure how they know?
B. Mac.
We
Are built of modules combined in a planned out way
Each new piece must be told where to go
Oh
Now there’s a science helping us to understand
How our cells encode this architectural plan
Signalling each other with genetic tools oh
Oh yeah
Wow
Phenotype the interface for mouse and man
Genotype the files and the subprograms
What then are the switches, circuit boards and boot code?
Evo-Devo
Looking at the logic in the ways that we grow
Every gene directed by a signal key code
Proteins that can activate, enhance or veto
Evo-Devo
Signals are controlled by other genes that signal
Calculating in a network labyrinthal
Where the heart and liver and the hands and feet go
Signal mapping tells each region what it ought to be yo
With circuits so deeply built upon
They’re older than the Paleo
The Paleozoic Era baby
In a crucial pathway changes tend to get torpedoed
Where they go calamity goes
As this cyclopic sheep knows..
See down they cascade like a domino
Like you and I drosophila
The path that makes us optical
Was laid a long long time ago
Back before we blew up the cambrian like a bomb bomb
Now my eye protein can make you see out of your bom bom
And Hedgehog and its relatives like Indian and Sonic
Set up set up in a gradient on segments embryonic
Split forebrains and asymmetric parts depend upon it
Flipping on genetic switches and logic
From devo to evo
Adult and embryo
Mostly don’t evolve in the genes of the genome
Safer the mutation aimed at regulation
Keep the building blocks and swap their activation
From devo to evo
Parts have alter egos
Homologs evolved from repeats in the schema
Switch a couple bases in the proper places
You’ll be watching flies grow legs out of their faces oh yeah
Evo-Devo
Stick around for Modern Synthesis the sequel
Only by combining can a new theory grow
Evolution and development amigos
Evo-Devo
Signals trigger patterns of complexity so
Switching up the switches of a signalling node
Gives a modular and simple way to evolve
Look at how our spinal segments generate a neat row
Built on a molecular clock
One cycle, one vertebra
One vertebra one vertebra baby
Speeding up its rate is snakes’ developmental cheat code
That and where a lizard’s feet grow
They turn off distal aminos
Evo-Devo
This is how we go from single cells to people
Every generation and in life primeval
Life in variations endless and beautiful
Badaboom
From devo to evo
Larva to mosquito
Patterns are resolved as the signals proceed yo
Map out a gene with a glow tag
Kill it with a morpholino
Short oligo morpholino baby
From devo to evo
Voyage of the Beagle
Body plans evolve when proteins steer the genome
In this manner life’s beauty grows
Aesthetica in vivo
Evo-Devo
[daily log: walking, 7km]