Developmental Biology's excellent reputation in Freiburg goes back to the days of the Hans Spemann who received the Nobel prize for his groundbreaking discovery of an "organizer center" in early amphibian embryos that controls the behavior and fate of surrounding cells. Today the University of Freiburg is one of the few universities in Germany that offers a full curriculum in Developmental Biol...

Developmental Biology's excellent reputation in Freiburg goes back to the days of the Hans Spemann who received the Nobel prize for his groundbreaking discovery of an "organizer center" in early amphibian embryos that controls the behavior and fate of surrounding cells. Today the University of Freiburg is one of the few universities in Germany that offers a full curriculum in Developmental Biol...

The conference 'Celebrating Darwin: From the Origin of Species to Deep Metazoan Phylogeny' was held at the Humboldt University in Berlin, from 3 to 6 March 2009. Specialists from the fields of bioinformatics, molecular biology, developmental biology, comparative morphology and paleontology joined forces to present and discuss novel approaches in reconstructing the still unresolved early branchi...

Michael Barresi is Professor of Biological Sciences at Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA, where he uses the zebrafish to understand central nervous system development. also Program Director ‘Student Scientists’ outreach project and has made significant contributions teaching developmental biology, including being co-author illustrator textbook Developmental Biology, producing documentaries st...

Nowadays, the focus of developmental studies is shifting away from formal models of developmental pathways that are characterised by flow charts of controlling factors connected by arrows, to mechanistic models that explain developmental processes at the cellular level. Surprisingly, this shift towards a cellular view of developmental biology is occurring simultaneously across a range of model ...

An appreciation of the fundamental principles of evolutionary biology provides new insights into major diseases and enables an integrated understanding of human biology and medicine. However, there is a lack of awareness of their importance amongst physicians, medical researchers, and educators, all of whom tend to focus on the mechanistic (proximate) basis for disease, excluding consideration ...

The differentiation of a leaf - from its inception as a semicircular bulge on the surface of the shoot apical meristem into a flattened structure with specialized upper and lower surfaces - is one of the most intensely studied processes in plant developmental biology. The large body of contemporary data on leaf dorsiventrality has its origin in the pioneering experiments of Ian Sussex, who carr...