Vertebrate life cycles and outlines of development

http://worms.zoology.wisc.edu/frogs/welcome.html 
Frogs and other amphibians will figure prominently in your studies of developmental biology. What are some of the advantages of studying development in this amphibian model organism? The Amphibian Embryology Tutorial at Jeff Hardin's Dynamics of Development site will guide you through the highlights of this model organism. Explore the site and correlate the information you find online with the topics in your book (Chapters 3, 4 and 5 in Wolpert text). Find all of the animations and movies. How many can you find? List them, along with the figure from the text which shows a static view of the same process.

Model Organism Databases:

http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/
This Embryology site from Mark Hill at the University of New South Wales takes you through a tour of the dynamic nature of development in a variety of model organisms, including details on normal and abnormal human embryo development.

http://www.sdbonline.org/sites/archive/dbcinema/ledouarin/ledouarin.html 
The Developmental Biology Cinema features quail-chick chimeras, first developed by Nicole Le Douarin (see also page 119 Wolpert text). Could you reproduce these manipulations in your laboratory?

www.xenbase.org/
XenBase contains a wealth of resources for Xenopus laevis genomics, embryology and laboratory techniques. Follow the “Anatomy and Development” tabs to visit the digitized images and developmental data from Nieuwkoop and Faber Normal Table of Xenopus laevis, or the archives of images and animations. For a truly interactive experience, click on the cell fate maps (based on the work of Sally Moody) for a dynamic look at fate of individual blastomeres in the frog embryo. If you were to inject dye into blastomere b1 in the 32 cell stage frog embryo what major systems would retain the dye? Conversely, use the “reverse map” to identify the blastomeres that give rise to the lens.

http://zfin.org
ZFIN, the zebrafish model organism resource for genomics and development includes digitized images and detailed descriptions of developmental stages modified from Kimmel et al., 1995. Follow the links to an electronic version of Monte Westerfield’s The Zebrafish Book a comprehensive guide to laboratory protocols for zebrafish. (Page 102 Wolpert text)

http://www.emouseatlas.org/emap/home.html 
EMAP, the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project includes a gene expression database and a three dimensional embryo anatomy atlas and movies. Download the mouse staging wall chart and post it in your lab. (Page 110 Wolpert text)

www.sdbonline.org/
The Society for Developmental Biology contains a wealth of resources for researchers and students alike. For fun you can visit the “Gallery” to view remarkable images from a diverse array of model organisms. Once there, follow the links to the laboratories that produced these images and learn more about their research.