Chapter 6 - The Best Laid (Body) Plans

This chapter was very informative with a lot of details and important facts. Instead of the chapter being boring and dull because of all the vocabulary terms and information it was actually really entertaining and exciting to learn about the outstanding process of how embryos develop. Shubin described the process in little words which made it easy to understand, he said "as the embryo got bigger, the yolk, its food supply, got smaller and smaller. By the time the yolk was gone, the embryo was usually big enough to hatch" (pg. 98). I was like WOW! that's really easy to comprehend because Shubin did not make it complicating by using big words. I really find it helpful that Shubin gives us many examples to relate from like when he talks about the chicken and how it develops. By giving all these examples we the audience are able to learn more about different animals and how they form and this makes the text wayyy more interesting! I found the three layers quite fascinating (ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm). The diagram on pg. 102 was helpful because it showed how we transform from one cell to more cells and then to a tube. And then the diagram on pg. 103 showed the three layers and where they are present in the tube. The Organizer was also fascinating which contained information that was able to form an entire body plan and inside the Organizer is DNA (once again DNA comes into the picture lol). I found it astonishing when Shubin started to talk about how some mutant flies have limbs growing out of their heads, duplicate set of wings, or extra body segments. That's reallyy sad!Poor flies.. :(