Description
Book Synopsis
''Quite simply the best book about science and life that I have ever read'' - Alice Roberts
How does life begin? What drives a newly fertilized egg to keep dividing and growing until it becomes 40 trillion cells, a greater number than stars in the galaxy? How do these cells know how to make a human, from lips to heart to toes? How does your body build itself?
Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz was pregnant at 42 when a routine genetic test came back with that dreaded word: abnormal. A quarter of sampled cells contained abnormalities and she was warned her baby had an increased risk of being miscarried or born with birth defects. Six months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and her research on mice embryos went on to prove that as she had suspected the embryo has an amazing and previously unknown ability to correct abnormal cells at an early stage of its development.
The Dance of Life will take you inside the incredible worl
Trade Review
One of the World's Top 10 Thinkers of 2020 -- Prospect
Quite simply the best book about science and life that I have ever read * Alice Roberts *
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-Goetz’s research and expert perspective with the clear and engaging narrative that is a hallmark of Highfield’s science writing * Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society and Nobel-prize winning scientist *
A touching, detailed portrait of a life in science. Beautifully written, it’s a reminder that scientists are human and their humanity affects every part of their work * Angela Saini, bestselling author of INFERIOR and SUPERIOR *
How does a single fertilised egg know how to develop into the trillions of different cells that making up a human? This book provides you with much more than the answer – it is story-telling at its very best. Together with Highfield, Zernicka-Goetz leads us through her life scientific, intertwining the exciting field of 21st biology with a joyous personal journey of discovery at the cutting edge of research * Jim Al-Khalili *
