Human genome at ten: Life is complicated : Nature News: "For example, transcription factors encoded in the urchin embryo's genome are first activated by maternal proteins. These embryonic factors, which are active for only a short time, trigger downstream transcription factors that interact in a positive feedback circuit to switch each other on permanently. Like the sea urchin, other organisms from fruitflies to humans organize development into 'modules' of genes, the interactions of which are largely isolated from one another, allowing evolution to tweak each module without compromising the integrity of the whole process. Development, in other words, follows similar rules in different species.
'The fundamental idea that the genomic regulatory system underlies all the events of development of the body plan, and that changes in it probably underlie the evolution of body plans, is a basic principle of biology that we didn't have before,' says Davidson."
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