Embryonic Development
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/one-many
With this background in mind, read From One, ManyLinks to an external site.. This is a news report on a series of articles that appeared in the journal Science in 2018. These articles used advanced sequencing and imaging technologies to “reveal the genetic roadmap to building an entire organism from a single cell” (Jiang 2018).
After reading this news report, respond to each of the following prompts (you must respond to both A and B):
(A) In at least 250 words, respond to the following prompt:
How does thinking about embryonic development as changes in gene expression within cells over time relate to what we have learned about how scientists have understood and explained development historically?
Note: to answer this question, you must address at least two of the topics we covered in this module.
(B) In at least 250 words, respond to the following prompt:
Imagine you are a scientist working on development at the beginning of the 20th century. You have been trained in experimental embryology and follow Roux’s entwicklungsmechanik. You have no understanding of genes (you’ll see in later lectures when and how genetics arose), but you have an understanding that embryonic development should be explained by appeals to internal/external factors and that development is shaped by organizers.
Respond to the overarching idea of this new research presented in the reading–the idea that development can be explained and understood in terms of mapping cell lineages. Tell us (1) what you think about this new way of understanding development and (2) why you think this way. You may draw from learning materials in both this and the previous modules in order to answer this question.
