Molecular Principles of Animal Development

Rating:
Summary: A Fully Modern Treatment of Animal Development
Review: While many older textbooks on development have incorporated the recent discoveries on the genetic and molecular mechanism underlying development, this is the first textbook to be written from scratch from a molecular point of view. Conventional descriptive embryology is relegated to the introduction (chapter 1); the rest of the book gives the modern perspective on development.

The molecular-level mechanisms are discussed first (chapters 2 to 5). The remaining chapters (6 to 12) discuss mechanisms at a cellular level. I found the book very clear and informative. The illustrations are very good. This book is a very useful reference for reading research papers in the professional magazines (and also reviews in places like Science or Nature magazine).

Of course, I also have an older edition of Gilbert as a reference. It remains to be seen if this novel approach to teaching development will be successful when used on students who are totally ignorant of classical embryology.