Chainsaw developmental biology


I’m kind of in to how undifferentiated tissue becomes mature and acquires a specific morphology, so I liked this series of photos of a big hunk of driftwood being shaped into an octopus. It gets from here:

To here:

However, I’m used to development proceeding autonomously. I don’t think it would work if I just put a tree trunk and a chainsaw together in a beaker in my yard, which disappoints me. Is it a matter of getting the salt concentration just right? The temperature?

Comments

  1. blf says

    Those pictures are time-reversed. You start with a kraken and chainsaw, and obtain a nice supply of calamari rings in time for dinner. Or in this case, what appears to be a large calamari ripieni, raising questions like: Just what is it stuffed with?

  2. Bruce says

    To the log and the chainsaw you need to add an undergraduate. If seasoned with some “research” credits, they might serve as the needed catalyst.

  3. nogginscratcher says

    Maybe if you gather a sufficiently large quantity of hydrogen and leave it alone for a few billion years…

  4. komarov says

    I don’t think it would work if I just put a tree trunk and a chainsaw together in a beaker in my yard, which disappoints me.

    If xkcd is anything to go by you’ll have to read up on powertool-neurology, but otherwise you’re pretty on the right track. (Woodpecker- or beaverneurology is probably better understood and they might be less noisy)