Life's Blueprint: The Science and Art of Embryo Creation
Benny Shilo
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 0300196636
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this engaging book, a distinguished geneticist offers a clear, jargon-free overview of the field of developmental biology. Benny Shilo transforms complicated scientific paradigms into understandable ideas, employing an array of photographic images to demonstrate analogies between the cells of an embryo and human society. Shilo’s innovative approach highlights important concepts in a way that will be intuitive and resonant with readers’ own experiences.
The author explains what is now known about the mechanisms of embryonic development and the commanding role of genes. For each paradigm under discussion, he provides both a scientific image and a photograph he has taken in the human world. These pairs of images imply powerful metaphors, such as the similarities between communication among cells and among human beings, or between rules embedded in the genome and laws that govern human society. The book concludes with a glimpse of promising future possibilities, including the generation of tissues and organs for use as “spare parts.”
Genome Exploitation: Data Mining the Genome
The Science of Ocean Waves: Ripples, Tsunamis, and Stormy Seas
Why Society is a Complex Matter: Meeting Twenty-first Century Challenges with a New Kind of Science
The Forbidden Universe: The Occult Origins of Science and the Search for the Mind of God
lead to a local concentration of RNA molecules that encode critical signaling components. The result is a localized translation of these RNAs and the subsequent local activation of a particular pathway. In other cases, the asymmetry may be manifested in the local activation of proteins that modify other proteins essential in a signaling pathway. Again, this manifestation would lead to the confined activation of that specific signaling pathway. In still other cases, the RNA being localized encodes
be multiple possible combinations among five pathways, in pairs, triplets, or more, thus generating numerous distinctions among genes that are recognized by given pathway combinations. For example, in winter, we can distinguish people in a crowd who have both red hats and black gloves, and in another instance those who have red hats and blue jackets. In each case a different group of people will be selected, with some possible overlaps. Figure 17. Combinatorial interactions among signaling
host of developmental junctions that are dependent on pathways triggered by receptor tyrosine kinases. In the roundworm, the determination of the organ that produces the eggs (the vulva) relies on a single cell that provides the activating protein, and the adjacent cells that respond to it produce the vulva. In the fruit fly, dozens of events rely on this pathway. They include patterning of the skin cells that form the belly, the nervous system, the eyes, wings, and legs. Although it may sound
the right compartment, forming a sharp straight boundary (C. Dahmann, Technische Universität, Dresden); bottom: Nuns belonging to the same order cluster at the ninth station in the Via Dolorosa (B. Shilo, Old City of Jerusalem) Figure 33. Defining the global orientation Emerging from a subway station in Manhattan, the passenger knows the coordinates of her location but not the orientation. Identifying a global cue, such as the position of the sun or the direction of traffic in the adjacent
of whether differentiated cells could “go back” to their primordial, undetermined state, we have to ask ourselves not only whether the actual pattern of gene expression can be reversed but also whether the various epigenetic modifications on the DNA of a differentiated cell, discussed above, can be erased, and if so, in what order (fig. 37). Considering our analogy of the master plan for producing an airplane, can the highlighting marks be removed so that the plan can be used to produce copies of