db4181

My students in Developmental Biology 4181 have been blogging away all term, and here are a few of the topics they're thinking about this week. Sea urchins Smooth muscle cells Lung cancer vaccines Tests are good for you (good news, since I'm giving them one right now) Opiate boosters Dead whales Giant snails We've been reading Zimmer's At the Water's Edge, and this is the week we start talking about cetacean evolution.
This week, my students are thinking about SIDS,aging,Christiane Nusslein-Volhard,oncogenes,hunger,individuality,worm movies,obesity,sunscreen, and whether todivide or die. A fairly typical set of undergraduate concerns, right? They've all also been reading chapters 3 and 4 of Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and their summaries are here: α,β,γ,δ,ε, andζ. If you missed it, here's Last week's digest and a brief explanation of what it's all about.
I'm teaching a course in developmental biology this term, and as part of the coursework, I'm making students blog. The idea is to force them to ferret out instances of development in popular culture, in their personal experience, and/or in their reading—I'm not asking for treatises, but simply short articles that let me know their eyes are open. This year I'm also encouraging outsiders to take a look at and comment on what they're saying, so every week I'll be posting a round-up of links to the developmental biology blog…and here they are: a human-specific gene first neurons Hox regulation…