Cheryll Tickle News Today

‘Not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation’: the life of a quotation in biology

Last modified on Wed 3 Feb 2021 07.33 EST How does a single fertilised egg divide and morph into an embryo with head, tail, limbs and organs? That question was an inexhaustible source of fascination to the biologist Lewis Wolpert, who has died aged 91. With a twinkle in his eye, he told audiences it was not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation – the stage in which a uniform ball of cells folds to become differentiated layers with the beginnings of a gut – that was “truly the most im...