Tim Cutts wrote:
>> In article <Pine.OSF.3.95.970129180308.16613E-100000 at pipe11.orchestra.cse.unsw.EDU.AU>,
> Van Dung Ly <vanly at cse.unsw.EDU.AU> wrote:
>> >My Question:
> >When a mammalian female's egg gets fertilized by a sperm and cell division
> >takes place, do we know how cells come to know where they are (relative
> >to each other) so that some become eg. kidney cells, brain cells, muscle
> >cells, nerve cells etc. ?
>> Not in great detail, no. Several of the basic principles are
> understood, especially in other organisms. Mammalian development is
> difficult to work with experimentally for obvious reasons (it occurs
> inside the mother). Most research into developmental mechanisms
> is done on other organisms: Drosophila (a fruit fly), Xenopus (a
> frog), zebrafish and chickens.
Hey! Don't forget "the worm" (_C. elegans_). We know the derivation and
"fate" of every (somatic) cell which makes up its adult body - of
course, there's only 959 of them... ;-)
--
'To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.'
Woody Allen, from "Stardust memories"
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Suzuki GS page: http://homepage.cistron.nl/~peterh/gsresources/
