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Asked by fayeadamou to Cat, Daz, Holly, Johnson, Pamela on 21 Jun 2011.
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Cat O'Connor answered on 17 Jun 2011:
Oh wow fayeadamou,
This would take a lot more than a few line and would def require a diagram or six! I’m going to bail out and say that I know you’ll learn this in school very soon and it’s really really REALLY cool so you should listen really good that day. Can you imagine that all of us started as two seperate cells (the egg and the sperm) that joined together to make you and me??? And that something so small could result in something as big as me by just multiplying cell??!!?? I think it’s pretty amazing!!
I know this is really a non-answer but I wouldn’t do it justice!
Cat 😀
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Pamela Lithgow answered on 17 Jun 2011:
Hi fayeadamou,
As Cat said this is a really interesting and complicated area of biology, it is called Embryology. I studied this at university and it really was fasinating. As Cat said the sperm and the egg which each contain half the infomation needed to make you join together then start to become a baby. Sperm and eggs are the only cells in you whole body that don’t contain all your DNA, they contain half each so that when they come together they can make a new person (I think that is pretty cool). When they do come together in the woman they fuse and start to multiply (as Cat said) then as the number of cells increases special messages (controlled by the DNA inside the cells!!) tell the cells what they will become. What cells become is controlled by where they will be in the body and what functions they are going to perform. This starts happening when the baby is really really tiny, before the woman even knows she is pregnant! I think that is pretty amazing. And normally it goes right, sometimes it doesn’t and this can cause problems for the baby.
I hope this goes some way to answering your question. You can comment and ask any more information you like, as I said this is a really fascinating area of biology but it is very complex.
Pam 🙂 -
Darren Braddick answered on 21 Jun 2011:
Hi fayeadamou!
Crazy but excellent question. The smallest and biggest cells come together from two people, fuse into a single cell but with double the DNA, and then this cell divides millions and millions of times to generate a functioning human being.
In short, the DNA of the parents will ‘mix’ and combine in various ways. This is why you have a mix of mother and father DNA, which is why many people have some physical appearance of their parents – like their dad’s nose and mother’s eyes. Many many physical things are decided at this stage – even as early as the first cell!!! Pretty much all diseases and conditions and physical properties (like eye colour, hair colour) are decided by the first cell, as the DNA is basically the PLAN for everything.
So, once the DNA is sorted out, and the plan is made, the cell divides several millions of times. During this time, a very important step concerns ‘stem cells’. Maybe you know what these are – basically they are cells which can do, and become, anything.
Consider your muscle – the cells in theory can be like cells of your brain, or liver, but they are not – they become specific, and special, we call that ‘specialised’. These specialised cells can only usually make more of themselves, and may not even be able to divide themselves. The stem cells can choose to become anything – maybe muscle, brain, maybe skin, whatever.
They can keep dividing though, and when they divide one copy might become something, and one might stay a stem cell. This means you have a constant line of stem cells. This is a very simple version of how that first cell – the sperm and the egg – begin to make a _big_ number of _different_ cells, which end up making a baby!
I hope this helps.. Its a very complex question!
Daz
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