Chapter 3: Having 12 fingers would be AWESOME.

Okay, so I wasn't really interested in this chapter until I got to the part about mutations in the hands and how, when applied to chickens, makes them duplicate their wings. That was my favorite part; it totally reminded me of the time when I went on youtube.com and searched "scary sea creatures/monsters" or "scary/mutated animals"... there are some really freaky things out there.

So, after reading this chapter, I learned that all cells, even though they have different functions all contain the same DNA. What makes their functions and outcome different is what patches of the DNA are active; that's why our arms and head look different--our arms use a certain patch to develop at a certain stage/time, and our head uses another at another stage/time....I wonder... what we would look like if the patch of active DNA that developed our arms was active in the the development of our heads. HAAHA.

The next lesson I learned after that, which underscores the whole point of chapter 3, is that DNA is the building block of life. It all starts from one cell, and each patch of the DNA activates at different times to develop different body parts, and the next thing you know, we have a head, arms, legs and a body. In fact, DNA is so fundamental that any slight change can/will result in major malformations as demonstrated in the experiments dealing with ZPA (placing a piece of foil between the ZPA and other areas of the body to ensure the ZPA does not travel to other parts of the body and injecting an egg with vitamin A).

- Ejay Yuan