At last night’s poster session I met Scott Gilbert of Swarthmore College and editor of a definitive text on Developmental Biology. He told me that before his last invited talk, at a symposium honouring the retirement of his former mentor, most in attendance wondered what turtleshell was all about. The scientists, figuring the title of his talk referred to some wacky Drosophila gene name, were surprised to find that Gilbert actually works on turtle shell development. Here he is with colleague Judith Cebra-Thomas at last evening’s poster session.

Gilbert and his colleagues have found that the bones that make up a turtle’s upper and lower shells develop by a bone development program called “intramembranous ossification” much like skull bones. They do their studies in the red-eared slider, a common pet-shop favourite. Controversially, they’ve proposed that the shell develops from neural crest cells that migrate out from the neural tube after it closes. They injected a dye into the neural tube of turtle embryos and find them in the carapacial ridge (what will become the top shell of the turtle). They believe these cells then migrate to help form the bottom shell.

I had to get a shot of their spiffy turtle shirts. I mentioned that they might not want their poster data showing up in the picture as I’d want to put it on the internet. But they waved off those concerns saying they weren’t worried about being scooped. OK, there probably isn’t a whole lot of competition in this field. Besides, I like to think they’ve taken their Aesop seriously.