Week 4 Shubin Assignment
Read Chapter 6 “The Best-Laid (Body) Plans” in Your Inner Fish and be prepared to discuss this in class and submit the answers to the following questions.
1. Compare the body plans of fish, lizards,cows and us.
2. Compare fish, amphibian and chicken embryos.
3. The differences among mammal, bird, amphibian and fish embryos pale in comparison with their fundamental similarities. Explain this statement.
4. Draw a sketch of the first 3 weeks of embryological development of humans.
5. What are the three embryological germ layers and what structures develop from each of them? Is this true for humans?
6. Birds, fish, reptiles and mammals look very different as adults. What similarities do they have as embryos.
7. Our bodies are “a tube within a tube. Explain.
8. When do the features that distinguish backboned animals from one another develop compared with our common “tube within a tube” body plan?
9. Do all the cells in the embryo have enough information to build whole bodies? How do we know?
10. How did Mangold produce twin newts?
11. What would happen if the Organizer region from a chicken was grafted to a salamander embryo? Why are the results significant?
12. Compare the Hox genes of flies and humans. Explain the significance.
13. What happened when Harland took some Noggin and injected it into an embryo? What did that prove?
14. How do genes interact with other genes to control development?
15. Explain: All animals are the same but different, like a cake recipe handed down from generation to generation.
16. What happens if you take sea anemone Noggin and inject it into a frog embryo? What does that prove?
