Hello! This is my very first lesson of Cellular and Developmental Biology with Dr. Parameswari but I was late for my first class. Luckily there was no punishment …In the first class, Dr. was telling her “Rules and Regulations” to us. She emphasized that we should not help others to sign for attendance or else we will get into BIG trouble.Besides, we should also read through the lecture notes and do the given exercises before the following class. Okay, I am a bit tensed right now.

The first lecture was about introduction to evolution and Charles Darwin, Father of Evolution. 

In this topic, we will learn about Lamarck’s theory and Darwin’s theory. Lamarck thought that environment pressure causes body changes. If an organism changes during life in order to adapt to its environment, those changes are passed on to its offspring. He said that change is made by what the organisms want or need. 

Giraffes are used as an example in the lecture notes where giraffes evolved their long necks by each generation stretching the necks further to get leaves in trees and that changed the body shapes of giraffes and was inherited. It doesn’t sound logic…On the other hand, Darwin’s theory stated that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection to increase the ability of an individual to compete, survive, and reproduce. Charles Darwin was influenced by the book entiltled “Principles of Geology” documented by Charles Lyell and Lyell’s idea led Darwin to his understanding of biological evolution. What I understand from this lesson was that, each of our characteristics is carried by genes which enable the characteristics to be passed on to the next generation. Evolution will occur over time through natural selection and dominant traits will be passed on and shown in the following generation. Soon, the organisms that carry the recessive trait will slowly extinct due to their low adaptability and ability to compete with others. Before the lesson ended, Dr. asked us to watch a lecture on “ Endless Forms Most Beautiful”. It was a quite boring and super long video and I was desperated while watching this almost one hour video due to the slow internet connection. 

From the video, it would help to complete our activity on “Darwin Observations” and “Evidence for Evolution”. However in the next lesson, most of us hadn’t watched the video due to internet problem so we can’t discuss the worksheets. And she gave us the second video on “Natural Selection vs Artifilcial Selection” which is almost the same length as the previous one…