Digesting evolution

摘要

The Evolution of Obesity is a fusion cuisine that brings together proximate explanations of weight-regulation mechanisms and the evolutionary reasons for why these can fail. The result is a rich meal that is memorable, if slightly hard to digest. The book is one of the first to use an evolutionary framework to analyse a major body of neuroendocrine knowledge about a specific condition.rnBy considering the adaptive functions of the physiological mechanisms of weight regulation, Michael Power and Jay Schulkin construct this framework to try to make sense of a huge amount of disconnected knowledge. They are in the vanguard of those who recognize a disturbing fundamental principle: natural selection shapes systems that are nearly indescribably complex. After millions of years of selection and genetic drift, the mechanisms responsible for a particular biological function are so intertwined and multifunctional that no simple description can be accurate.