Drosophila embryo development:

Time Lapse Of The Embryonic Development Of Drosophila Melanogast – video powered by Metacafe

Kewalo Marine Laboratory in Hawaii ,which is home for many famous evolutionary and developmental biologists like Mark Martindale ,Michael G. Hadfield and Elaine Seaver is being planned to be shut down by University of Hawaii.Its really shocking to hear this news and its a real shame for all marine biology enthusiasts.They are planning to shut one of two marine units in the university only to invest more money in the cancer research unit.Its really sad to hear these kinds of news everywhere in the world ,where funds for fundamental …

Chengjian Lagerstatte,in China is a fossil paradise discovered in 1984 that has been dated to the Lower Cambrian period, 525 million years ago, making it around 10 million years older than Canada’s famous Burgess Shale.Recently Derek Siveter of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History along with a Chinese group unearthed an enigmatic fossil which exhibit group behaviour ,which is mostly unknown in modern invertebrates and has never been demonstrated in fossil invertebrates.This new species of Early Cambrian arthropod formed sturdy chains comprising of around 20 individuals,where one animals …

Digit evolution in Birds is a classical problem in the field of evolution owing to the contradictory results observed in morphology and development.Bird wings only have three fingers, which evolved from ancestors(theropod dinosaurs) that, like humans and most reptiles, had five fingers.The digits of Birds wing develop from embryological position that become 2 ,3 and 4 ,meaning they lose digit 1 and 5.But when one look at early birds like Archaeopteryx ,the fossil record clearly suggest that digits four and five were lost and reduced in the dinosaur ancestors …

Recently Nobel prizes were announced in various categories and GFP protein took the honors in the chemistry department.OSAMU SHIMOMURA, MARTIN CHALFIE, and ROGER Y TSIEN will receive Nobel prize in December 2008 for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP ( you can read here ).But the man’s name, who is responsible for the cloning of this glowing gene in early 90’s was conspicuous by its absence. Douglas prasher cloned the GFP gene when he was at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and later …

The dream of watching a single cell getting transformed into embryo is finally possible ,thanks to the latest technique, called Digital Scanned Laser Light-Sheet Fluorescence Microscopy.Previously researchers were successful in capturing first few hours of development in invertebrates like Nematodes but performing the same feat in vertebrates was always a difficult task. Joachim Wittbrod tand others from EMBL ,Germany has made it possible to visualize a Zebra fish embryo grow from a single cell to 20,000 cells with a beating heart.

Jelly fish , a free living Cnidarian got its credit for its contribution in this years chemistry Nobel prize .At a UCSD news conference Roger Tsien did not forget to thank this beautiful animal for the role it played in making life easier in biology.

“It has been (fluorescing) for millions of years, though for reasons we still don’t understand. None of this would have happened without the jellyfish.”
Roger Tsien, Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie were awarded the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for their roles in discovering and developing …