Post 1: Checks and Balances

Through my first read of this novel, one of the biggest ideas I got was that humans, and indeed all life, live in a constant compromise. On page 56, Dr. Moalem describes such an intricate balance in the human body. The sun produces UVB rays that penetrate the skin and destroy folate but is also required to make vitamin D. Consider page 44 as well, where Dr. Moalem evidences that Type I diabetes was a potential solution to decreasing overall temperatures (as observed 13,000 years ago). This ladder example reveals that this “compromise” is often a tradeoff.

Certain genetic predispositions (variation) exists naturally among a population and changes in the environment as other factors select, but one beneficial  trait for a species in today’s environment may be selected against in the future. In these tradeoffs, it seems that a short term gain is preferable to long term loss.

Big Idea 1 states that “the process of evolution drives the diversity and unity in life.” We can all agree that evolution is the change of genetic makeup of a population over time, and Dr. Moalem offers a more than ample amount of examples. Please identify other “tradeoffs” in this book as they relate to Big Idea 1 and the issue I presented in the second paragraph. Also, these compromises and tradeoffs do not make a “super organism” taking all the positive adaptations and keeping them through time. Explain how populations are able to respond to changes without explicitly expressing every trait. Finally, feel free to offer your thoughts on how older traits may be obsolete or detrimental to an organism living today or simply expand on how compromise is not limited to enormous lengths of time, but also is a phenomenon affecting organisms everyday (e.g. the iron and macrophage example).

Marko Sukovic/ msukovi3@gmail.com / 3.10.2013