Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz - The Dance of Life: The New Science of How a Single Cell Becomes a Human Being

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz has written a memoir from the heart. It is a lovely evocation of the triumphs and crushing disappointments on the roller-coaster ride in the pursuit of scientific truth. It is an engaging personal story full of the challenges of negotiating the interface between personal and scientific aspirations from a gifted and successful woman scientist who has managed it well.

Virginia E. Papaioannou, professor emerita of genetics and development, Columbia University

The question of how a gorgeous baby develops from an inanimate, post-coital speck has fascinated humans from the year dot. Highfield and Zernicka-Goetz illuminate this apparent miracle in an entertaining narrative full of scientific insights, human interest and thoughtful reflection.

Graham Farmelo, author of The Universe Speaks in Numbers

Quite simply the best book about science and life that I have ever read.

Alice Roberts, Professor of Public Engagement in Science, University of Birmingham

Of all the biological sciences, developmental biology may be the most complicated, but Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz makes it easier in The Dance of Life. An accomplished researcher whose discoveries in this field truly rewrote textbooks, she offers a rich, detailed look at how humans arise from the union of two cells. In tracing her path as a woman in the male-dominated areas of embryology and developmental biology, Zernicka-Goetz takes the reader with ease through the incredibly complex dance of life that cells undertake in building a human embryo.

Emily Willingham, coauthor of The Informed Parent

How does a single fertilised egg know how to develop into the trillions of different cells that make up a human? This book provides you with much more than the answerit is story-telling at its very best. Together with Highfield, Zernicka-Goetz leads us through her life scientific, intertwining the exciting field of twenty-first-century biology with a joyous personal journey of discovery at the cutting edge of research.

Jim Al-Khalili, coauthor of Life on the Edge

How an entire human can emerge from a single cell is one of the great mysteries of life. This book is a wonderful exposition of that amazingly complicated process and combines Zernicka-Goetzs research and expert perspective with the clear and engaging narrative that is a hallmark of Highfields science writing.

Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Part memoir, part mission to touch creation itself, The Dance of Life is a candid and gripping odyssey into one of the greatest microscopic scientific mysteries of allthe cellular divisions that spawn human life.

Samira Ahmed, writer and broadcaster, BBC

Few books succeed as well as this in taking a complex area of rapidly advancing science and turning it into a compelling human story. Rarely will you read such an intimate and personal account of scientific discovery.

Evan Davis

Illuminating Zernicka-Goetz and Highfields informative professional memoir has much to engage readers.

Publishers Weekly

An in-depth journey through the world of the research embryologist. The story has a memoirlike atmosphere, especially when Zernicka-Goetz turns to episodes of her life. But she is never far from the science. Meaty and entertaining.

Kirkus

A touching, detailed portrait of a life in science. Beautifully written, its a reminder that scientists are human and their humanity affects every part of their work.

Angela Saini, author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrongand the New Research Thats Rewriting the Story

How many things in life are more intriguing than the story of how you built your body and your mind all by yourself? The origin and development of a new life is one of the greatest mysteries of biology, yet this is something that all of us have done.

We all know how this story starts: one solitary cella fertilized eggdivides into a close-knit family of similar-looking cells. But when examined from the viewpoint of the gene and the cell, there are many paths that development can follow, along with the creation of tissues and organs that escalate in form and complexity so rapidly that, paradoxically, while trying to discern the origins of a human life, one can find oneself staring into what seems to be a pathless future.

When this creation story is examined from the viewpoint of a human, who can struggle simply coordinating calendars to meet a few friends on a Saturday night, it is extraordinary how an embryo with no brain, consisting of a single cell, manages to divide and grow to become the most complex sentient being that we know of.

The development of the human embryo appears even stranger when compared to the familiar things we encounter in everyday life, which tend to be made of simple, immutable units, from Lego bricks to microchips and other elements and components. For flexibility, these basic units come in different types, so that wood can be found in planks, dowels, and doors; metal appears in the form of nails, hinges, and screws; and so on. And yet our bodies go one step further than simply having a repertoire of basic bits and pieces. Their basic units are also malleable. They can change their character, they can differentiate from parent cellsknown as stem cellsinto bone, muscle, brain, and other kinds of cells.