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OK, so evo-devo is evolutionary developmental biology.
And it's one of these ideas
that people say is new,
but really it's hundreds of years old,
and it's just come back into vogue recently.
Umm, I'm not really sure why they call it evo-devo,
I tried to look that up:
maybe evo-devo 'cause it rhymes?
I think it does have to do something
with the man devo, umm...
Ui, let me start again.
You can sort of forget that elaborate explanation for a bit.
Because evo-devo is really just about how genes work.
The sort of old view about how genes work
is that a gene is a blueprint
for making a particular part of an animal.
So, there's a million different kinds of animals out there,
then there should be a million different kinds of blueprints.
But it's not really the case.
It turns out that even in two species
that look completely different,
like a mouse and a house fly,
they both have the same gene that says
"Make an eye".
So, how come the results are so different?
The basic idea is simple:
genes aren't blueprints - they're switches.
Individually, they don't do much.
But if you have a master switch,
that can turn on other switches in groups,
then you can do something useful.
Like plugging different combinations of stuff
into the same master switch,
you can get different useful results,
that fit different needs.
So that gene that says: "Make an eye!",
is just like this power strip.
It switches other genes on in groups,
so that something useful can happen,
like growing an eyeball.
And depending on that combination of those other genes,
the end result might look like this,
or like this.
But the master gene is always the same.
And that's the connection between evo and devo,
which lets us understand both much better.
Want to grow a body part, or de-velop?
You hit the master switch.
Want to change a body part of fit a different need?
Or evolve?
Mix up the plugs.
And that wasn't so hard, was it?