As a Human Biology Major, evolution obviously plays a very large part in this field of science. I started learning about evolution as early as my elementary science class. I feel like it is a major part in all that we learn in our science classes today. I think my major, human biology, is one of the fields that uses the idea of evolution the most. The process of creating a human on a genetic level uses the idea of evolution in all aspects of it. In genetics, human variability is one of the first and most important things that is learned. 

I really liked on the second page of the article where it said “Biology explains how organisms work..but it is up to evolution to explain the why behind these mechanisms”. I think this quote in the article really ties in both biology and evolution. I wanted to see what the definition of evolution was online pertaining to biology. It said “a change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over generations”. When I think of evolution, the first thing that comes to mind are certain traits that have changed over millions of years that change how that organism acts. An example I always think of is the color of a certain moth. It was originally a white color, but once the industrial revolution started the air became more polluted and caused the color of the moth to darken. This was because it helped them blend in against predators. So before reading anything in this unit, my personal definition  was a change over millions of years in a population that can help an organism survive and reproduce. I also liked in the article by Alters and Alters where they mention that evolution had very practical considerations that are used in day-to-day life. For me as a student, without understanding the basics behind natural selection, it would be hard for me to understand many more topics in biology. A major topic that is very important in the healthcare field is antibiotic resistance. I really liked how the article talked about this and showed how it relates back to evolution. 

I thought the article “The 2% Difference” was a really interesting one to read. I think this article opened my eyes even more to what a small change in the genome can do. It really emphasized how such small mutations and changes can lead to such huge changes. A quote that really stuck out to me was where it was talking about insertion or deletion mutations and it said “It’s like saying “I’ll have the mousse for desert” to “I’ll have the mouse for desert”. Before reading that I never thought of such a small change really make that big of a difference. It really put it all into perspective.

I thought this week was very interesting because of how much it is related to my major, human biology. Many of the things I read opened my eyes to things I didn’t think about before and tied in many topics I’ve learned before in biology to this anthropology class.