A fin-de siècle achievement: charting new waters in vertebrate biology
Grunwald, D.J.
Science 274(5293): 1634-1635
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 8984632 Document Number: 459679
Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Entwicklungsbiologie in Tubingen and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have launched a systematic genetic analysis of how the vertebrate embryo is formed. The scientists' work was reported as a group of 36 papers in the December issue of Development. The groups, led by Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Wolfgang Driever, have amassed and started to analyze a collection of over 1,800 developmental mutants representing defects in approximately 500 different genes that contribute to the form and function of the zebra fish embryo. It is anticipated that the study of the zebra fish mutants will give insights into the genes and mechanisms that coordinate normal vertebrate embryogenesis and that, when altered, result in various inherited disorders in humans.