Baby bio

EDINBURGH scientists are aiming to produce a stage-by-stage, chronological listing of the tissues present in the first eight weeks of the development of the human embryo.

The university's bioinformatics group plans to make the listings available on the Internet. The data will help biologists to find out, for example, the age at which various tissues of the heart first appear. The biologist will also be able to browse through the tissues present at each stage of development gaining useful insights into the processes of change.

The Pounds 35,000 project, led by Jonathan Bard of the University's anatomy department, is backed by the Medical Research Council.