Includes index.

Contents: Part One: An introduction to developmental biology: An introduction to animal development -- Genes and development -- The cellular basis of morphogenesis: Differential cell affinity -- Part Two: Patterns of development: Fertilization: Beginning of a new organism -- Cleavage: Creating multicellularity -- Gastrulation: Reorganizing the embryonic cells -- Early vertebrate development: Neurulation and ectoderm -- Axonal specificity -- Early vertebrate development: Mesoderm and endoderm -- Part Three: Mechanisms of cellular differentiation: Transcriptional regulation of gene expression: Transcription factors and the activation of specific promoters -- Transcriptional regulation of gene expression: The activation of chromatin -- Control of development by RNA processing -- Translational regulation of developmental processes -- Part Four: Specification of cell fate and the embryonic axes: The genetics of axis specification in Drosophila -- Specification of cell fate by progressive cell-cell interactions -- Constructing the mammalian embryo: Establishment of body axes and the mechanisms of teratogenesis -- Part Five: Cellular interaction during organ formation: Development of the tetrapod limb -- Cell interactions at a distance: Hormones as mediators of development -- Sex determination -- The saga of the germ line -- Developmental mechanisms of evolutionary change.