Molecular and Developmental Biology

Developmental biology is one of the fastest growing and exciting areas in the life sciences. Although still reputed to be rather dull in some quarters, it is becoming a central organizing discipline in biology, relating cell and molecular biology, anatomy, ecology, evolution, and medicine to each other. This is the result of the 'molecular explosion' and other scientific breakthroughs in the last about fifteen years. Developmental biology has been transformed from a field in which ingenious manipulative experiments generated speculations about unobservable underlying causes, such as gradients and prepatterns, to one in which we have a very detailed knowledge of what is actually going on at the molecular and cellular level. The present book attempts to convey the essence of this revolution to the lay reader. The book will be appropriate for course that emphasize cellular and molecular aspects of development as well as those that focus on descriptive embryology and morphogenesis. This book contians: -Anatomy of Developmental Biology - Evolution of Life Cycle - Fertilization - Sperm and Egg Building - Cell-To-Cell Communication - Germ Cell - Molecular Techniques - Role of Cell Adhesion Molecules - Developmental Biology of Plant - Human Development - Experimental Embriology However, it will be particularly useful for those courses. that cover both the molecular and desriptive aspects of development It will be of great interest to those students and biologists who have only a superficial knowledge of the subject.

Kalpana Trivedi born on 3rd January, 1958 in Surat, Gujrat. She has obtained her M.Sc. In 1982 from Gujarat University and then joined as a lecturer in Government College of Rajkot. She has made outstanding contributions to the fields of cytogenetics and cell biology. Her work has shed important light on chromosome organization and replication in Drosophila. She has published a number of books and papers in reputed National and International journals.