How does a single cell become me?
We all start as a single cell, but our bodies are made of trillions, creating an array of shapes, structures and organs. So how does one cell become the body?
Our bodies are made of cells, tens of trillions of cells. They all have particular roles and functions in the body, from digesting food, to producing hair, to hunting down pathogens. But all of this incredible complexity started as just a single cell.
Gila, from Israel, asked CrowdScience to find out how the development of incredible structures, and systems in the body are coordinated by the cells. Are cells communicating? How do cells know what they should be doing?
To find out, Geoff Marsh meets a Cambridge researcher uncovering the first cell division in our lives, and peers into a fertile chicken egg to see the developing embryo as it grows a limb. CrowdScience finds out why scientists like Dr Megan Davey use chickens to understand the development of human fingers and investigates how individual cells with the same DNA manage to choreograph a dance of cell replication, movement and communication to create our bodies in all of their complexity.
Presenter: Geoff Marsh
Producer: Rory Galloway
(Photo: Cells grouped together. Credit: Getty Images)
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- Fri 10 May 201919:32GMTBBC World Service except South Asia
- Sat 11 May 201923:32GMTBBC World Service
- Mon 13 May 201904:32GMTBBC World Service Online, UK DAB/Freeview, News Internet & Europe and the Middle East only
- Mon 13 May 201905:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean & South Asia only
- Mon 13 May 201906:32GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa & East Asia only
- Mon 13 May 201910:32GMTBBC World Service West and Central Africa
- Mon 13 May 201913:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia
- Mon 13 May 201917:32GMTBBC World Service South Asia
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CrowdScience
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