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[
Science,
1995]
The contrasts between the sexes have inspired countless plays, novels, and other creative works. Sex differences inspire a group of developmental biologists, too-but there's a twist. While artists and most of the rest of us are fascinated by the effects of the male-female divide, these biologists are trying to learn how it arises in the first place. Their goal: to trace out the gene pathways that turn an embryo into a male or female. This quest has recently become one of the hottest areas of developmental biology, as two meetings held this year and devoted solely to the subject attest.
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[
Science,
1990]
Can a lowly worm help neurobiologists untangle the pathology of Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and other human brain diseases? That surprising question kept cropping up at a recent Dahlem conference on degenerative brain disorders. Although progress has been made toward understanding those disorders, conference participants had to conclude that they don't yet know nearly enough about how brain cells die. And that's where the lowly worm may
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[
Science,
1984]
The end of 1983 saw the completion of a major project in developmental biology. All the cell divisions, deaths, and migrations that generate the embryonic, then the larval, and finally the adult forms of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans have now been traced. It is the first time the complete cell lineage of an organism of this degree of complexity, one that contains many of the diverse cell types found in all higher animals, has been determined.
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[
Science,
1995]
When it comes to G proteins, cell biologists have amassed a great wealth of material. They have identified nearly 30 of these proteins, which serve as key relays in the pathways that transmit signals from hormones, neurotransmitters, and other cellular regulators from the cell membrane to the interior. And studies with cultured cells have enabled researchers to learn a great deal about the biochemistry of G proteins...