The Dance of Life
Symmetry, Cells and How We Become Human
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
'Quite simply the best book about science and life that I have ever read' - Alice Roberts
How does life begin? What drives a newly fertilized egg to keep dividing and growing until it becomes 40 trillion cells, a greater number than stars in the galaxy? How do these cells know how to make a human, from lips to heart to toes? How does your body build itself?
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz was pregnant at 42 when a routine genetic test came back with that dreaded word: abnormal. A quarter of sampled cells contained abnormalities and she was warned her baby had an increased risk of being miscarried or born with birth defects. Six months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and her research on mice embryos went on to prove that – as she had suspected – the embryo has an amazing and previously unknown ability to correct abnormal cells at an early stage of its development.
The Dance of Life will take you inside the incredible world of life just as it begins and reveal the wonder of the earliest and most profound moments in how we become human. Through Magda’s trailblazing research as a professor at Cambridge – where she has doubled the survival time of human embryos in the laboratory, and made the first artificial embryo-like structures from stem cells – you’ll discover how early life is programmed to repair and organise itself, what this means for the future of pregnancy, and how we might one day solve IVF disorders, prevent miscarriages and learn more about the dance of life as it starts to take shape.
The Dance of Life is a moving celebration of the balletic beauty of life’s beginnings.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Developmental biologist and Caltech professor Zernicka-Goetz brings significant credentials in embryology to her debut, an uneven but illuminating popular science work. Zernicka-Goetz, writing in the first person with Highfield (Super Cooperators, coauthor), does a good job of describing the scientific process and the excitement of discovery, and of recounting the process behind her breakthroughs, such as identifying when and how the first cells in an embryo break symmetry, which allows differentiation and development to occur. Not neglecting her field's harsher side, she acknowledges the criticism this discovery initially received from skeptical fellow scientists, and credits the support of "family, friends, and colleagues" with allowing her to persevere until a refined lab test finally confirmed her finding. Zernicka-Goetz also describes how she, with her team, created a lab protocol that doubled the time in which human embryos could be studied in vitro, and how they greatly advanced the understanding of developing embryos' self-repair mechanisms. All of this science is understandably explained and graspable for nonspecialists. Unfortunately, the final chapter, on the struggles women face in science, is too abbreviated to do justice to such an important topic. Nonetheless, Zernicka-Goetz and Highfield's informative professional memoir has much to engage readers.