The miracle of life?
The other day in Developmental Zoology lab (aka. embryology) we watched fertilization occur with sea urchin eggs (and sperm, of course). That was very cool. It's really a very fast process when you consider everything that must occur!! Took about an hour from start to finish (I mean we're never really finish developing).
The sperm penetrates the egg, which causes the egg to shift in a manner and close around the sperm, essentially sucking the DNA into the egg. Bet you didn't know that! Skip some steps (expulsion of polar bodies- and suchness). So 2 pronuclei form (egg DNA and sperm DNA) migrate to each other dissipate as things are sorted and readied for cell division and then they're off! Cell starts dividing, go through gastrulation...eventually you get an adult sea urchin...from 1 cell (considering sperm only offer DNA- nothing else).
It's really amazing. Life is so weird. How do we develop from this little cell. Just one, which divides into millions. All the different tissues, organs, all derived from this one cell- How does anything ever work through all that!
I didn't think that embryology would be interesting.
The sperm penetrates the egg, which causes the egg to shift in a manner and close around the sperm, essentially sucking the DNA into the egg. Bet you didn't know that! Skip some steps (expulsion of polar bodies- and suchness). So 2 pronuclei form (egg DNA and sperm DNA) migrate to each other dissipate as things are sorted and readied for cell division and then they're off! Cell starts dividing, go through gastrulation...eventually you get an adult sea urchin...from 1 cell (considering sperm only offer DNA- nothing else).
It's really amazing. Life is so weird. How do we develop from this little cell. Just one, which divides into millions. All the different tissues, organs, all derived from this one cell- How does anything ever work through all that!
I didn't think that embryology would be interesting.