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Alec Jeffreys’s Experiments to Identify Individuals by Their Beta-globin Genes (1977-1979)
In a series of experiments in the late 1970s, Alec J. Jeffreys in the UK and Richard A. Flavell in the Netherlands developed a technique to detect variations in the DNA of different individuals. They compared fragments of DNA from individuals’ beta-globin genes, which produce a protein in hemoglobin. Previously, to identify biological material, scientists focused on proteins rather than on genes. But evidence about proteins enabled scientists only to exclude, but not to identify, individuals as the sources of the biological samples.
Format: Articles
Subject: Experiments
The First Successful Cloning of a Gaur (2000), by Advanced Cell Technology
The first successful cloning of a gaur in 2000 by Advanced Cell Technology involved the cells of two animals: an egg cell from a domestic cow and a skin cell from a gaur. The researchers extracted the egg cell from the ovary of the domestic cow and the skin cell from the skin of the gaur. First, the researchers performed nuclear transplantation on the egg cell of the cow, during which they removed the nucleus of the egg cell. The mitochondria of the egg cell remained intact inside the cell.
Format: Graphics
Subject: Experiments, Organisms, Reproduction
Tomorrow's Children (1934)
Tomorrow's Children is a film that tells the story of Alice Mason, a young woman whom the US government forcibly sterilizes because she comes from a family with a history of alcoholism, mental illnesses, and physical disabilities, traits that they considered biologically determined and inferior. The film, released in 1934, was directed by Crane Wilbur, produced by Bryan Foy, written by Wilbur and Wallace Thurman, and released by Foy Productions Ltd.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
Mechanistic Realization of the Turtle Shell
Turtle morphology is unlike that of any other vertebrate. The uniqueness of the turtle's bodyplan is attributed to the manner in which the turtle's ribs are ensnared within its hard upper shell. The exact embryological and genetic mechanisms underpinning this peculiar anatomical structure are still a matter of debate, but biologists agree that the evolution of the turtle shell lies in the embryonic development of the turtle.
Format: Articles
Subject: Processes
The French Flag Model
The French flag model represents how embryonic cells receive and respond to genetic information and subsequently differentiate into patterns. Created by Lewis Wolpert in the late 1960s, the model uses the French tricolor flag as visual representation to explain how embryonic cells can interpret genetic code to create the same pattern even when certain pieces of the embryo are removed. Wolpert's model has provided crucial theoretical framework for investigating universal mechanisms of pattern formation during development.
Format: Articles
Assisted Human Reproduction Canada (AHRC)
Established under the Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) Act of 2004, Assisted Human Reproduction Canada (AHRC), also known as the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada, was created in 2006 to oversee research related to reproductive technologies and to protect the reproductive rights and interests of Canadian citizens. AHRC serves as a regulatory body for the development and use of such research and technology while enforcing the guidelines and restrictions laid out by the AHR Act.
Format: Articles
Subject: Organizations, Reproduction
Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680)
Jan Swammerdam, known as the founder of the preformation theory based on his extensive research on insect development, was born on 12 February 1637 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Baertje Jans Corvers and Jan Jacobszoon Swammerdam. He began medical school on 11 October 1661 at the University of Leiden. A few of his classmates included Regnier de Graaf, Frederik Ruysch, Niels Stensen (Nicolaus Steno), and Robertus Padtbrugge. Padtbrugge would later join the East India Company and send Swammerdam exotic animals.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Warren Harmon Lewis (1870-1964)
As one of the first to work at the Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Embryology, Warren Harmon Lewis made a number of contributions to the field of embryology. In addition to his experimental discoveries on muscle development and the eye, Lewis also published and revised numerous works of scientific literature, including papers in the Carnegie Contributions to Embryology and five editions of Gray's Anatomy.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Bicoid
Bicoid is the protein product of a maternal-effect gene unique to flies of the genus Drosophila . In 1988 Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard identified bicoid as the first known morphogen . A morphogen is a molecule that determines the fate and phenotype of a group of cells through a concentration gradient across that developing region. The bicoid gradient, which extends across the anterior-posterior axis of Drosophila embryos, organizes the head and thorax.
Format: Articles
Subject: Processes
William Keith Brooks (1848-1908)
Biologist William Keith Brooks studied embryological development in invertebrates and used his results as evidence for theories of evolution and ancestral heredity. He founded a marine biological laboratory where his and others' embryological studies took place. Later in life, Brooks became head of the Biology Department at Johns Hopkins University where he helped shape the minds of leading embryologists.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Dissertation: A Quadruple-Based Text Analysis System for History and Philosophy of Science
Computational tools in the digital humanities often either work on the macro-scale, enabling researchers to analyze huge amounts of data, or on the micro-scale, supporting scholars in the interpretation and analysis of individual documents. The proposed research system that was developed in the context of this dissertation, known as the Quadriga System, works to bridge these two extremes by offering tools to support close reading and interpretation of texts, while at the same time providing a means for collaboration and data collection that could lead to analyses based on big datasets.
Format: Essays and Theses
Subject: Outreach
Chorionic Villus Sampling
Chorionic villus sampling (CVS) is a test used for prenatal diagnosis. Safe to perform at an earlier stage in pregnancy than amniocentesis, CVS is another invasive prenatal diagnostic test that can be performed as early as ten weeks after the woman's last menstrual cycle. While this test does carry some risks, it is generally very effective at predicting heritable diseases during or soon after the embryonic stage of development.
Format: Articles
Subject: Technologies
Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941)
Ernest Everett Just was an early twentieth century American experimental embryologist involved in research at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy. Just was known for simple but elegant experiments that supported the "fertilizing" theory of Frank R. Lillie and served as an antagonist to Jacques Loeb's work with artificial parthenogenesis.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Etienne Stephane Tarnier (1828–1897)
Etienne Stephane Tarnier was a physician who worked with premature infants in France during the nineteenth century. He worked at the Maternité Port-Royal in
Paris, France, a hospital for poor pregnant women. Tarnier developed and introduced prototypes of
infant incubators to the Maternité in 1881. Tarnier's incubators became standard in neonatal care,
especially for premature infants, enabling doctors to save many such infants that previously would
have died.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (1829-1910)
Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger was a physiologist known for his research on respiration, the respiratory quotient, experimenting on the effects of electricity on muscles and nerves, and his study of the ovaries and egg development. His experiments on how the gravitational orientation of frog eggs affects their cleavage plane inspired embryologists such as Wilhelm Roux and Gustav Born to conduct their own experiments using frog eggs.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Translational Developmental Biology
Translational developmental biology is a growing approach to studying biological phenomena that explicitly aims to develop medical therapies. When discussing the generation of new therapies it is often argued that they will emerge as a "translation" from "fundamental biology." Although translational research is not a new term, "translational developmental biology" has been steadily gaining popularity as discoveries in cell and developmental biology, particularly those involving stem cells, provide a basis for regenerative medicine.
Format: Articles
Subject: Theories
Epigenetic Landscape
The epigenetic landscape is a concept representing embryonic development. It was proposed by Conrad Hal Waddington to illustrate the various developmental pathways a cell might take toward differentiation. The epigenetic landscape integrates the connected concepts of competence, induction, and regulative abilities of the genes into a single model designed to explain cellular differentiation, a long standing problem in embryology.
Format: Articles
Subject: Theories
The Aschheim-Zondek Test for Pregnancy
Throughout history many different methods have been devised for the early detection of pregnancy. From the time of the Ancient Egyptians, inspection of the urine has been a popular place to start. However, it was not until the discovery of hormones in the early twentieth century that the development of truly reliable pregnancy tests occurred. Prior to 1978, when the first home pregnancy tests became available in the United States, pregnancy testing was done in hospital laboratories using various methods, one of them being the Aschheim-Zondek, or A-Z test.
Format: Articles
Subject: Technologies, Reproduction
Diana W. Bianchi
Diana W. Bianchi studied the medical treatment of premature and newborn infants in the US during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bianchi helped develop non-invasive prenatal genetic tests that use cell-free fetal DNA found within maternal blood to diagnose genetic abnormalities of the fetus during pregnancy. The test provides a means to test fetuses for chromosomal and genetic abnormalities.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
Craig C. Mello (1960- )
Craig C. Mello is an American developmental biologist and Nobel Laureate, who helped discover RNA interference (RNAi). Along with his colleague Andrew Fire, he developed gene knockouts using RNAi. In 006 Mello won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contribution. Mello also contributed to developmental biology, focusing on gene regulation, cell signaling, cleavage formation, germline determination, cell migration, cell fate differentiation, and morphogenesis.
Format: Articles
Subject: People
"Genetic Programming: Artificial Nervous Systems, Artificial Embryos and Embryological Electronics" (1991), by Hugo de Garis
In 1991, Hugo de Garis' article "Genetic Programming: Artificial Nervous Systems, Artificial Embryos and Embryological Electronics" was published in the book Parallel Problem Solving from Nature. With this article de Garis hoped to create what he envisioned as a new branch of artificial embryology called embryonics (short term for "embryological electronics"). Embryonics is based on the idea of adapting the processes found in embryonic development to build artificial systems.
Format: Articles
Subject: Publications
Lap-Chee Tsui (1950-)
Lap-Chee Tsui is a geneticist who discovered the cystic fibrosis (CF) gene, and his research team sequenced human chromosome 7. As the location of the cystic fibrosis gene is now known, it is possible for doctors and specialists to identify in human fetuses the mutation that causes the fatal disease. Tsui's research also outlined the mechanisms for the development of cystic fibrosis, which were previously unknown.
Format: Articles
Subject: People, Reproduction
Nettie Maria Stevens (1861-1912)
Multiple theories about what determines sex were tested at the turn of the twentieth century. By experimenting on germ cells, cytologist Nettie Maria Stevens collected evidence to support the connection between heredity and the sex of offspring. Stevens was able to interpret her data to conclude that chromosomes have a role in sex determination during development. For her time, she was an emerging breed: a woman of science making the leap from the world of data collection to that of male-dominated interpretive work.
Format: Articles
Subject: People, Reproduction
The Game of Life, by John Horton Conway
The Game of Life, or just Life, is a one-person game that was created by the English mathematician John Horton Conway in the late 1960s. It is a simple representation of birth, death, development, and evolution in a population of living organisms, such as bacteria. Martin Gardner popularized the Game of Life by writing two articles for his column "Mathematical Games" in the journal Scientific American in 1970 and 1971. There exist several websites that provide the Game of Life as a download or as an online game.
Format: Articles
Subject: Technologies
Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004)
Francis Harry Compton Crick, who co-discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953 in Cambridge, England, also developed The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, and further clarified the relationship between nucleotides and protein synthesis. Crick received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine that he shared with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA.
Format: Articles
Subject: People