Developmental
Biology -- BIO3323
About the course: The course description in the college
catalog includes:
A study of morphogenesis, including structural and biochemical changes during development and the mechanisms which control developmental processes. Control, patterns, and the mechanisms of the morphogenetic cell movements are considered in depth.
The course includes a laboratory.
Prerequisite, Biology 2210 (Cell Biology).
This is a course about embryonic
development. It has components of anatomy, biochemistry, genetics and cell
biology, since the modern field of developmental biology is an amalgam of
these.
A fertilized animal egg is usually
a sphere, or something close to it. Adult animals have a wide variety of
shapes, including representatives with radial and bilateral symmetry. Our task
is to understand the transition between.
The laboratory component of the
course serves a mix of needs. Students have perhaps their first real look at
development in a variety of organisms (alive, where possible). Subjects vary
from year to year, but have included birds (chicks), amphibians (both frogs and
salamanders), fish (medaka, zebrafish), echinoderms (sea urchins), flies (fruit
flies) and marine worms. We explore ways to obtain and handle fertilized eggs,
various methods of manipulating and observing them, and an assortment of
experimental approaches to answer outstanding questions in the field.
Fruit fly egg, photo by