By David Prentice

Editor’s note. This appears today on Dr. Prentice’s blog at www.frc.org

French scientists have used a new microscopic technique to observe the beginning of life, in this case of a zebrafish. The new technique, published in Science allows rapid capture of microscopic images, which can be stitched together to form videos [www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/329/5994/967].

Nature’s blog has more details [http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/08/a_zebrafishs_first_minutes_of.html]
Here is one of the videos, showing the zebrafish from a one-cell embryo to the 512-cell stage.

Now if this is considered the “beginning of life” for a zebrafish, starting at the one-cell embryo stage, what does that say about the human embryo?