Chapter 6: The Best-Laid (Body) Plans

It's amazing that in just 5 days, a single body divides 4 times to produce a ball of 16 cells, the blastocyst. To add to that, Shubin introduced to me that an entire body forms only from the ball embedded in the wall of the uterus. I was always unable to fully grasp that the complicated human body was created starting from the embryo, but now, I know that the obscure human body was developed from only the top part of the blastocyst and not all of it. I still can't wrap around the thought that a "Frisbee" (101) like thing can become a fully developed human being. If it wasn't for Shubin, I would never have known that we have a "tube-within-a-tube" (101) structure in us. In addition, I would never have known that pinching one side of a newt egg from the other would make twins. It's amazing that a single small piece, the Organizer holds the future structure and development of the germ layers that makes up the whole body.