Q. If you were a developmental biologist/geneticist, what research questions would you ask?

A.

1. What signaling pathways determine or play a key role in the distribution of cell types in early development (ie. preimplantation in mammals)? How do these pathways affect the “identitiy” of the cells they act upon?

2. At what point is the zygotic genome utilized instead of maternal mRNA for protein production, and how does this shift occur? Is this process different in different mammals, in other vertebrates, or in other organisms?