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How to Build a Better Being By William Lee
In his 1871 treatise The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin argued that although the concept of humans having evolved from a lower species was abhorrent to some, he personally “would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey” as from the violent, savage early humans who undoubtedly were also part of our family tree. Given that sentiment, I’d like to believe that the father of evolutionary biology would look kindly upon the ungainly, mottled-brown creature that is prancing across my computer screen, screeching and chattering joyously with each step, and occasionally pausing to engage in a primitive ritualistic dance that vaguely resembles the Frug.
But Australopithie, as I call him, is not the mere product of random genetic mutations that allow him to adapt to the environment more effectively than his predecessors, as were the apelike ancestors whom Darwin was proud to claim as his own. To the contrary, I created him quite deliberately, with the help of Spore Creature Creator, a software program developed by game designer Will Wright, the auteur behind SimCity, The Sims and a new release, Spore, which simulates the evolutionary process. Creature Creator is a part of the new game. The program enables a player to assemble his or her own designer creature by picking various body parts and characteristics from menus, and then modifying them to suit. But behind the entertainment value, there’s actual science. As the National Geographic Channel documentary How to Build a Better Being details, Wright drew inspiration from the current state of knowledge in evolutionary developmental biology—or “Evo-Devo,” as scientists whimsically call it.
In particular, Creature Creator metaphorically embodies the concept that many very different types of creatures—from fruit flies and mice to elephants and humans--are created from essentially the same basic set of genes, employed in different ways. The key to diversity is a small fraction of the genome—eight so-called “toolkit genes”—that essentially tell thousands of other genes where to put various body parts on a developing embryo, and determine whether the end product is an insect or a person.
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