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RESISTANCE TO CHANGE. "The invention of the printing press was at its time perceived as a threat to European culture, social order and morality. “Ever since they began to practice this perverse excess of printing books, the church has been greatly damaged,” lamented Francisco Penna, a Dominican defender of the Spanish Inquisition." There are modern parallels of course. https://lnkd.in/d8-nHvR View in LinkedIn

TOOL REWIRING. "Some of these “experiments” were successful, producing the animal body plans that we see today. Each of the many diverse body plans would have been formed by a distinct regulatory network, formed by roughly the same set of regulatory genes acting in different combinations and regulated by a different set of developmental enhancers." https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

COMMUNICATION IMPACT. "Throughout human history new technologies of communication have had a significant impact on culture." The printing press. Morse code. The telegraph. The telephone. TV. Radio. The internet. https://lnkd.in/d8-nHvR View in LinkedIn

TOOL COMPLEXIFICATION. "In an ancestral metazoan, this parts list must have been employed in relatively simple GRNs, controlling the development of an ancestral body plan. During early animal evolution there must have been a period of rapid experimentation involving the re-wiring of this parts list in many different combinations." (GRNs = gene regulatory networks). https://lnkd.in/dTKCkih View in LinkedIn

OLD DRIVERS. "Historically, cultural evolution occurred through migration. Migration happens as a result of war, geographical changes or survival requirements and demands. War affected the cultures morals, and regions (if they were dominated etc.) Regional domination could imply control over the population, causing the citizens to move.” https://lnkd.in/dsKGhcp View in LinkedIn

REGULATORY VS STRUCTURAL GENES. "With each new variation, there is an alteration in the relation between the regulatory genes and the so-called structural genes that actually produce the proteins and eventually the lipids and other building blocks that make up an organism." https://lnkd.in/dx4KvtT View in LinkedIn

REGULATORY GENE EXPANSION. "What seems clear is that morphological evolution of body plans, such as is documented by Neoproterozoic and Cambrian fossils, involved increases in the complexity of both the body plans and the regulatory systems that specified them." https://lnkd.in/dx4KvtT View in LinkedIn

BODY PLAN COMPLEXITY. "Many different body plans can be specified by similar genes early within a cascade, whereas morphological complexity can be achieved by regulatory evolution in many parts of the cascade." https://lnkd.in/dx4KvtT View in LinkedIn

SAME TRIGGERS. "Mammals and arthropods both display a striking diversity of morphologies within each of their body plans, but this diversity is generated chiefly by genes active after the Hox-cluster genes have done their work." https://lnkd.in/dx4KvtT View in LinkedIn

VARIABLE HOX PLANS. "It looks very much as if the Hox clusters become larger with increasing body plan complexity, although this cannot be the entire story. Some primitive forms have clusters unlike the Hox cluster of higher forms." https://lnkd.in/dx4KvtT View in LinkedIn