BIOL 3290/325: Developmental Biology
"It is not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life."
-Lewis Wolpert When sperm meets egg we begin a cascade of events that 9 months later results in you. Have you ever stopped to think about: Why your heart has 4 chambers? How we form fingers and toes? How a nerve makes it all the way to your big toe? This course covers the molecular and cellular building blocks such as genetics, cell signaling, cell adhesion, and cell differentiation that drive the transition from a fertilized egg to a fully formed human. Heavy emphasis is placed on model organisms such as sea urchins, drosophila, xenopus, chickens, and zebrafish. The accompanying lab utilizes model organisms to study fertilization, embryo anatomy, regeneration, and neural tube formation. |
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