7. The Importance of Development in Evolution

Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior (EEB 122)

Development is responsible for the complexity of multicellular organisms. It helps to map the genotype into the phenotype expressed by the organism. Development is responsible for ancient patterns among related organisms, and many structures important to development shared by many life forms have changed little over hundreds of millions of years. Development is expressed combinatorially, allowing a relatively small amount of genetic information to be expressed in many different ways.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction
03:17 - Chapter 2. Structures of Development
11:04 - Chapter 3. Development and the Diversity of Life
20:21 - Chapter 4. The Control of Development
25:09 - Chapter 5. "Boxes" (Transcription Factors)
38:42 - Chapter 6. The Big Picture and Conclusion

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Spring 2009.