Developmental biology

Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and "morphogenesis", which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy.

Most broadly put, developmental biologists seek to understand the emergence of all the complexity of a human, an insect or a flower from a single fertilized ovum. Many Stanford faculty both within and outside of the Department of Developmental Biology investigate key developmental questions.

One of the most fundamental questions of developmental biology is how initially symmetric or unformed structures give rise to highly complex three-dimensional functional organs and tissues. An obvious example is the formation of an embyro from an egg, but other examples include the way that a bacteria selects the site for the formation of a flagellum, or a yeast cell its bud site, or a field of epithelial cells the site for the formation of hair cells. Understanding the ways that this fundamental biologic problem is solved by Nature is the topic of projects in the laboratories of Lucy Shapiro, Anne Villeneuve, Matthew Scott, Dale Kaiser, Harley McAdams, Stuart Kim, Margaret Fuller, James Nelson and Jeff Axelrod.

The origins, functions and uses of stem cells are developmental issues that have recently become the center of media attention. These cells have the remarkable property of continually renewing themselves while giving rise to different cell types that can give rise to the cells necessary to make an organ, such as the immune system or the brain. Perhaps, most astounding is the recent discovery that the egg cytoplasm has the ability to reset the nucleus of many cell types to a ground state. From this ground state, perhaps defined by genomic chromatin structure the nucleus can serve as a stem cell to all the cells of an entire organism and produce a genetically identical or "cloned" individual. More specialized stem cells are well defined for the hematologic system and methods of purification of these stem cells, developed at Stanford in the Weissman laboratory, have become the basis of treatment of treatment of leukemia. Stems cells for neurons are being defined and may be useful for treating the many degenerative neurologic diseases. Studies in this area have excited the imagination of the general public, politicians and religious leaders. Work in this area is being conducted in the laboratories of Margaret Fuller, Irving Weissman, James Spudich, Lucy Shapiro, Anne Villeneuve, Seung Kim, and several others on the Stanford campus including Helen Blau and Paul Khavari.

Each month we make an effort to feature scientific literature regarding developmental biology for the betterment of your knowledge. We also announce developmental biology related news (that is notable).

UCSC Genome bioinformatics[genome.ucsc.edu]
Stanford devbio[devbio.stanford.edu]