• About the blog
  • About Sedeer
  • Series
    • Words of Science
    • Discussions
    • Foraging
    • Natural Selection
    • QM Workshop
  • Contact me
  • Accumulating Glitches
  • Collective Marvelling

Inspiring Science

~ Casting light on great ideas

Inspiring Science

Tag Archives: Developmental biology

Book Review: Born Anxious

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Behavior, biology, Developmental biology, Gene expression, Health, Popular science, science, science and society, Science in Society

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 →

Advertisement

The give-and-take between mothers and their offspring

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by sedeer in Development, Evolution, Genetics

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

animals, biology, Developmental biology, Education, evolution, Genetics, imprinting, nursing, offspring, Popular science, science

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 sedeer in Development, Genetics, Vertebrates

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

animals, backbone, biology, Developmental biology, Gene, Gene expression, notochord, Popular science, science

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 sedeer in Development, Evolution, Form, Insects, Plants

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

biology, Developmental biology, Drosophila, evolution, Genetics, Hsp90, Insecta, Mutation, Phenotype, Popular science, shape

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.
Continue reading →

The ABCs of flowers

06 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by sedeer in Development, Plants

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

biology, Developmental biology, Flower, Gene, Gynoecium, Petal, Plant, Popular science, science, Sepal, Stamen

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 sedeer in Development, Vertebrates

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

animals, biology, clock and wavefront, Developmental biology, embryo, Embryogenesis, Popular science, science, somitogenesis

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.

Continue reading →

Search

Donate Button with Credit Cards
Follow @inspiringsci
Follow Inspiring Science on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,098 other subscribers
RSS Feed RSS - Posts

Ongoing discussions

  • poker on Natural selection: different modes
  • สล็อตpgเว็บตรง สล็อตเว็บดีที่สุดสล็อตเกมมาแรงสมัครคาสิโนออนไลน์ on Pointing ravens and theory of mind
  • Genetics Determine Division of Labor in Ants - Guardian Liberty Voice on How does an ant colony coordinate its behaviour?
  • Humans and Music | Idiomas RalFer on Book review: Constructing A Language
  • jaymes90 on Do ants really count their steps?
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California - Rhythm 86 on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California – SHINKISAURUS on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • "We Again, Child": Inside Day Journey, the First Submit-Pandemic Music Competition in Southern California - EDM.com | Real Raw News today on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound

What’s popular now?

  • Falling faster than gravity
  • No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • The Ten-legged Spider
  • Do ants really count their steps?
  • Words of science: crepuscular

Blogs to check out

  • Accumulating Glitches
  • alternative viewpoints
  • AntyScience
  • Baldscientist
  • Eyes on the Environment
  • Language Log
  • Letters of Note
  • naked capitalism
  • Raising My Rainbow
  • The Scorpion and the Frog
  • The Smaller Majority

Copyright

Creative Commons License
All text and original images by Sedeer El-Showk. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Thanks to

  • Arkadia International Bookshop
  • The Book Hive
  • The Television and Movie Store
  • Rönnels Antikvariat
Inspiring Science is part of:
  • Collective Marvelling
  • SciComm Network

I'm on ScienceSeeker-DNA

Nature
Blog Network

Categories

Archives

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Inspiring Science
    • Join 1,699 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Inspiring Science
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.