Tag Archives: Developmental biology

Book Review: Born Anxious

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Books, Development, Disease, Genetics, Humans

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I enjoyed Born Anxious more than I expected to but less than I hoped. Written by Daniel Keating, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, it synthesizes over a decade of research on how stress affects the course of our lives. Keating presents an interesting and convincing case that experiences early in life — or even in previous generations — can set biological switches that have wide-ranging consequences, affecting health, social well-being, and professional success. Continue reading →

The give-and-take between mothers and their offspring

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Development, Evolution, Genetics

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Image credit: Flickr user nekrumThis is a story about a gene which makes nursing mice produce more nutritious milk while also making their offspring less demanding. The gene serves to balance nutrient supply and demand between the mother and pup. If the gene is knocked out, the mother’s milk is less rich, but the pups are more demanding, evening out the impact. Things only go wrong when there’s a mismatch. If pups with a defective copy of the gene feed from a normal mother, their increased demand makes them grow larger than normal. Conversely, pups with a good copy end up smaller if they feed from a mother lacking a working copy, since her milk is less nutritious. Continue reading →

Controlling development by the numbers

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Development, Genetics, Vertebrates

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An embryo of the sea squirt Ciona. The nuclei of the 40 notochord cells are highlighted in red and the contours of a few notochord cells are defined by green fluorescent protein. All other visible nuclei are colored in blue. (Image Credit: Janice H. Imai and Anna Di Gregorio)Genes have to be carefully coordinated to switch on at just the right moment in development in order to make a mature, complex embryo out of just a single cell. Scientists working at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York have discovered how this coordination is accomplished. In a paper just published in PLOS Biology, they describe how the gene Brachyury controls the timing of a cascade of genes involved in a crucial process in vertebrate development. Continue reading →

Hsp90: translating environmental stress into evolutionary change

16 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in Development, Evolution, Form, Insects, Plants

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In the 1990s, Suzanne Rutherford and Susan Lindquist were studying fruit flies with a mutated version of the Hsp90 gene and found that the absence of this single gene led to a wide range of developmental defects.  This was surprising not only because Hsp90 isn’t directly related to development, but also because of the remarkable breadth of its impact.  Uncovering how this gene affects so many aspects of development has led to an intriguing story linking responses to environmental stress with the evolution of developmental pathways.
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The ABCs of flowers

06 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in Development, Plants

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SunburstIn 1991, researchers at the California Institute of Technology described the basic genetic system behind how flowers are made.  The “ABC model” that they proposed was so popular and successful that it was quickly taken up by the community and was even included in textbooks when I did my undergraduate studies just six years later. I remember being fascinated the first time I heard about it. This was the sort of thing that got me really excited — disparate facts were brought together in an elegant mechanism that could robustly set up a flower but was still flexible enough to create different forms. Now, over a decade later, I’d like to share this inspirational work with you. Continue reading →

Head to tail: segmenting the body

12 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Development, Vertebrates

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Mouse embryo, 10.5 days old by Alan Boyde (Photo credit: dullhunk)Unlike plants, which can continue to develop new organs and elaborate their body plan throughout their life, animals generally have to contend with a body plan which is fixed at birth.  The basic body plan is laid out during embryogenesis, the intricately choreographed interplay of different processes and mechanisms involved in the development of the embryo.  An important step early in animal embryogenesis is the lengthwise division of the embryo into a series of primitive segments, called somites; each somite will later give rise to vertebrae, skeletal muscle, and dermis, although some of the somites may fuse before this happens.  Correct formation of the somites is a crucial component of the development and is precisely regulated in both space and time.  This tight regulation is accomplished by a remarkably simple, beautiful and ancient mechanism.

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