3) Handy Genes

This chapter overall was pretty interesting, though pretty difficult to fathom for me. Before I read this chapter, I never knew how my thumb was so different from my pinky finger. Then I learned that there was this tissue called the zone of polarizing activity, or ZPA from the experiment done in John Saunder's laboratory. I thought it was pretty funny yet surprising that scientists were able to manipulate the development of the embryos, forming mirrored limbs by adding vitamin A to activate the other ZPA. Then the fly geneticists found the hedgehog sequence. Hedgehog... I knew Sonic [the] hedgehog was coming, when the group of scientists named it that for the chicken hedgehog. Since when do you ever see a book quote something from a video game? I haven't seen many. I thought it was neat how one could discover other organisms' developments in order to understand ours. Overall, this chapter was a really fun read. DNA... who knew?

- Keith Choison