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Gavin Rylands de Beer: how embryology foreshadowed the dilemmas of the genome

Abstract

Gavin de Beer is remembered, at best, as a shadowy figure among those who gradually built up our current view of evolution and the role of genetics. This view derives from the Modern Synthesis — the recognition that emerged in the 1930s that genetics can adequately explain Darwinian evolution and speciation through natural selection. I argue that de Beer's theories of embryology had a crucial role in the Modern Synthesis, and that his work indirectly continues to influence how we think about the genome, evolution and developmental biology.

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Figure 1: Gavin de Beer.
Figure 2: Selected examples of Haeckel's diagrams of comparative embryo stages.
Figure 3: The logic of the main theories of embryogenesis.
Figure 4: The logic of alternative interpretations of recapitulation.

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Horder, T. Gavin Rylands de Beer: how embryology foreshadowed the dilemmas of the genome . Nat Rev Genet 7, 892–898 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1918

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