The Making of You

The Incredible Journey from Cell to Human

Katharina Vestre, Linnea Vestre

• Publisher: Greystone Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781771644938
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

A quirky and inspired guide to your very own origin story.

This enlightening and irresistible book for adults explains how you were made—not with the standard euphemisms told to us as children, but with vivid, exacting prose that unveils all the complex processes we never knew produced human life.

With a brilliant talent for thoughtful, charming science writing, Katharina Vestre takes us from cell to human and shares surprising facts along the way—such as that sperm have a sense of smell and that hiccups were likely inherited from our ancient, underwater ancestors. She also shows why gender is more complicated than we think and reveals the questions scientists still ponder about how we came to be.

A miniature drama of cosmic significance, this is the incredible story of you.

REFERENCES

Images

SIZE REFERENCE FROM week 1 is from: Nesheim, Britt-Ingjerd, Foster, in Store medisinske leksikon; https://sml.snl.no/foster; others are taken from Moore, K. L., Persaud, T. V. N. and Torchia, M. G. (2016), The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (10th edn). Philadelphia, PA: Saunders Elsevier. See the tables on pages 76 and 92.

Textbooks used in all chapters

I HAVE USED many standard textbooks on embryology, developmental biology and cell biology as sources. The two most important are Moore, K. L., Persaud, T. V. N. and Torchia, M. G. (2016), The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (10th edn), Philadelphia, PA: Saunders Elsevier, and Gilbert, S. F. (2010), Developmental Biology (9th edn), Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. I strongly recommend them if you want to dive a bit deeper into the story of the making of you.

Below is an overview of other sources that I’ve used, sorted by chapter.

The Race

Bahat, A., Caplan, S. R. and Eisenbach, M. (2012), Thermotaxis of human sperm cells in extraordinarily shallow temperature gradients over a wide range, PLOS ONE, 7(7): e41915

Eisenbach, M. and Giojalas, L. C. (2006), Sperm guidance in mammals – an unpaved road to the egg, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 7(4): 276–85

van der Ven, H. H., Al-Hasani, S., Diedrich, K., Hamerich, U., Lehmann, F. and Krebs, D. (1985), Polyspermy in in vitro fertilization of human oocytes: frequency and possible causes, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 442: 88–95

The Hidden Universe

Clift, D. and Schuh, M. (2013), Restarting life: fertilization and the transition from meiosis to mitosis, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 14(9): 549–62; doi: 10.1038/nrm3643

Gilbert, S. F. and Barresi, J. F. (2016), Developmental Biology (11th edn), Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. Additional article, Chapter 7: ‘Anton van Leeuwenhoek and his perception of spermatozoa’; http://11e.devbio.com/wt070102.html

Gjersvik P. (2008), Sædcellen, Tidsskrift for Den norske legeforening, 3: 128–265

Harris, H. (2002), Things Come to Life: Spontaneous Generation Revisited, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Lawrence, C. R. (2008), Preformationism in the Enlightenment, Embryo Project Encyclopedia; http://embryo.asu.edu/handle/10776/1926

Leeuwenhoek, A. van (1677) Letter no. 35, to William Brouncker, November 1677. The whole letter can be read in Dutch and in English translation on the web site of DBNL –De Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren: www.dbnl.org/

Maienschein, J. (2005), Epigenesis and preformationism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epigenesis/

Pasteur, L. (1864), On spontaneous generation. An address delivered by Louis Pasteur at the Sorbonne Scientific Soirée of 7 April 1864

The Recipe for a Human

Dahm, R. (2005), Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of DNA, Developmental Biology, 278(2): 274–88; doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2004.11.028

O’Connor, C. (2008), Isolating hereditary material: Frederick Griffith, Oswald Avery, Alfred Hershey, and Martha Chase, Nature Education, 1(1): 105

Pray, L. (2008), Discovery of DNA structure and function: Watson and Crick, Nature Education, 1(1): 100

The Invasion

Bayes-Genis, A., Bellosillo, B., de la Calle, O., Salido, M., Roura, S., Ristol, F. S. and Cinca, J. (2005), Identification of male cardiomyocytes of extracardiac origin in the hearts of women with male progeny: male fetal cell microchimerism of the heart, Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, 24(12): 2179–83; doi: 10.1016/j.healun.2005.06.003

Bianconi, E., Piovesan, A., Facchin, F., Beraudi, A., Casadei, R., Frabetti, F. and Canaider, S. (2013), An estimation of the number of cells in the human body, Annals of Human Biology, 40(6): 463–71; doi: 10.3109/03014460.2013.807878

Brosens, J. J., Salker, M. S., Teklenburg, G., Nautiyal, J., Salter, S., Lucas, E. S. and Macklon, N. S. (2014), Uterine selection of human embryos at implantation, Scientific Reports, 4: 3894; doi: 10.1038/srep03894

Chan, W. F., Gurnot, C., Montine, T. J., Sonnen, J. A., Guthrie, K. A. and Nelson, J. L. (2012), Male microchimerism in the human female brain, PLOS ONE, 7(9): e45592; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045592

Felker, G. M., Thompson, R. E., Hare, J. M., Hruban, R. H., Clemetson, D. E., Howard, D. L. and Kasper, E. K. (2000), Underlying causes and long-term survival in patients with initially unexplained cardiomyopathy, New England Journal of Medicine, 342(15): 1077–84; doi: 10.1056/nejm200004133421502

Gellersen, B. and Brosens, J. J. (2014), Cyclic decidualization of the human endometrium in reproductive health and failure, Endocrine Reviews, 35(6): 851–905; doi: 10.1210/er.2014-1045

Kara, R. J., Bolli, P., Karakikes, I., Matsunaga, I., Tripodi, J., Tanweer, O. and Chaudhry, H. W. (2012), Fetal cells traffic to injured maternal myocardium and undergo cardiac differentiation, Circulation Research, 110(1): 82–93; doi: 10.1161/circresaha.111.249037

Melford, S. E., Taylor, A. H. and Konje, J. C. (2014), Of mice and (wo) men: factors influencing successful implantation including endocannabinoids, Human Reproduction Update, 20(3): 415–28; doi: 10.1093/humupd/dmt060

National Institutes of Health (NIH) History (2003), A timeline of pregnancy testing; https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/timeline.html

Oron, E. and Ivanova, N. (2012), Cell fate regulation in early mammalian development, Physical Biology, 9(4): 045002; doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/9/4/045002

Teklenburg, G., Salker, M., Molokhia, M., Lavery, S., Trew, G., Aojanepong, T. and Macklon, N. S. (2010), Natural selection of human embryos: decidualizing endometrial stromal cells serve as sensors of embryo quality upon implantation, PLOS ONE, 5(4): e10258; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010258

Wang, Y. and Zhao, S. (2010), Vascular Biology of the Placenta, San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Life Sciences

Natural Clones and Unknown Twins

Davies, J. A. (2014), Life Unfolding: How the Human Body Creates Itself, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Friedman, L. F. (2014), The stranger-than-fiction story of a woman who was her own twin, Business Insider, 2 February; http://uk.businessinsider.com/lydia-fairchild-is-her-own-twin-2014-2/

Kean, S. (2013), The you in me, Psychology Today, 11 March; https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201303/the-you-in-me/

Kramer, P. and Bressan, P. (2015), Humans as superorganisms, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(4): 464–81; doi: 10.1177/1745691615583131

Milo, R. and Phillips, R. (2015), Cell Biology by the Numbers, New York: Garland Science; http://book.bionumbers.org/how-many-genes-are-in-a-genome/

National Human Genome Research Institute (2016), An overview of the Human Genome Project, 11 May; https://www.genome.gov/12011238/an-overview-of-the-human-genome-project/

National Human Genome Research Institute. (2016). The cost of sequencing a human genome, 6 July; https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/

O’Shea, K. (2014). Medical mystery: woman gives birth to children, discovers her twin is actually the biological mother, Philly.com, 4 February; http://www.philly.com/philly/health/science/Medical_mystery_Woman_gives_birth_to_children_discovers_her_twin_is_actually_the_biological_mother.html

Robson, D. (2015). Is another human living inside you? BBC Future, 18 September; http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150917/is-another-human-living-inside-you

Tao, X., Chen, X., Yang, X. and Tian, J. (2012), Fingerprint recognition with identical twin fingerprints, PLOS ONE, 7(4): e35704; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035704

van Dijk, B. A., Boomsma, D. I. and de Man, A. J. (1996), Blood group chimerism in human multiple births is not rare, American Journal of Medical Genetics, 61(3): 264–8; doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19960122)61:3<264::AID-AJMG11>3.0.CO;2-R

The Contours of a Body

Brown, Paul (1999), Listening to the heart of the ocean, The Guardian, 29 July; https://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/jul/29/technology

Fielder, S. E. (2016), Resting heart rates, in Merck Veterinary Manual, Kenilworth, NJ: Merck & Co.

Hodge, R. (2010), Developmental Biology: From a Cell to an Organism, New York: Facts on File

Levine, H. J. (1997), Rest heart rate and life expectancy, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 30(4): 1104–6.

Nesheim, Britt-Ingjerd (2014), Foster, Store medisinske leksikon, 6 November; https://sml.snl.no/foster

Cell Language for Beginners

Ahmed, A. M. (2002), History of diabetes mellitus, Saudi Medical Journal, 23(4): 373–8

Eknoyan, G. and Nagy, J. (2005), A history of diabetes mellitus or how a disease of the kidneys evolved into a kidney disease, Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease, 12(2): 223–9; doi: 10.1053/j.ackd.2005.01.002

Vaaler, Stein and Berg, Jens Petter (2016), Diabetes, Store medisinske leksikon, 11 August; https://sml.snl.no/diabetes

The Art of Building a Fruit Fly

Carroll, S. B. (2005), Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• The Race
• The Hidden Universe
• The Recipe for a Human
• The Invasion
• Natural Clones and Unknown Twins
• The Contours of a Body
• Cell Language for Beginners
• The Art of Building a Fruit Fly
• An Heirloom from the Ocean
• Fleshing Out the Plan
• Sex and Sea Worms
• Secret Preparations
• The Brain’s Inner Wanderings
• The Senses
• A Hairy Past
• From Water to Air
• The End – or The Beginning
• References
• Copyright Page