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The Cell Biology of Separation—During the Most Important Event of Life
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Rajprasad Loganathan
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Johns Hopkins University
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Department of Cell biology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States.
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rlogana2@jhmi.edu
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In an attempt to convince a clinician of the importance of studying early development, the British developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert notably remarked that it is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important event in your life (Wolpert, 1991). The importance, and wonder, of gastrulation – a process that turns a spherical ball of early embryonic cells into a torus – rests in its outcome. It is during gastrulation that the body plan of animal embryos along with the three germ layers is laid down. Gastrulation also serves as the focal event for the morphogenetic changes that precede the emergence of internal structures during development.
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