From Knowable Magazine’s Special Report: Building Bodies. For an introduction to the series see Eva Emerson and Rosie Mestel’s Node post. For decades, genetics and biochemistry have formed the bedrock of developmental biology. But it turns out that physical forces — the way cells push, pull and squeeze each other — play a huge role,[…]

From Knowable Magazine’s Special Report: Building Bodies. For an introduction to the series see Eva Emerson and Rosie Mestel’s Node post. How do trees find their sense of direction as they grow? Researchers are getting to the root — and the branches — of how the grandest of plants develop. By Rachel Ehrenberg   There’s[…]

Dear developmental biologists, As editor-in-chief and executive editor of Knowable Magazine from Annual Reviews, we’re grateful for the invitation to write a post here at The Node about a special report on developmental biology — “Building Bodies” — that Knowable just published. We hope that the articles, written in accessible language, will intrigue and be[…]

By Lisandro Maya-Ramos and Takashi Mikawa Bilaterality, the property of having two symmetrical sides, is widely conserved among animals. It is estimated that 99% of all animal species are bilaterians, with the remaining 1% composed by sponges and radial animals, which lack or have radial symmetry respectively (1).  Although bilaterality is widespread among animals, little[…]

We’re discovering our inner fish: finding out whether we really do go through a fishy phase in the womb, and looking at the legacy of Tiktaalik, the first fish to walk on land.