Nine Make the Nobel Grade

摘要

This year, Nobel Prizes in science and economics went to pioneers in developmental biology, atmo-spheric chemistry, and rational behavior, and to the discoverers of two elementary particles. Does the family of genes that determine where an insect sprouts wings also tell fish where to grow fins? Are the molecules that map out the body plan in an embryo later required to produce specific organs and tissues and to help cells communicate with each other? Today questions such as these preoccupy developmental biologists around the world, yet few researchers would be asking-and answering-them had it not been for pioneering studies done between the 1940s and the 1970s showing how a few genes control the embryonic development of fruit flies.