Principles of Developmental Biology

Fred Wilt and Sarah Hake’s Principles of Developmental Biology is a modern new text for the undergraduate course in developmental biology, informed by the molecular and cell biology revolutions that have changed the field over the last fifteen years.

Designed for the one-semester undergraduate course, Principles of Developmental Biology stresses fundamental concepts, a select number of instructive experiments and cases, and contemporary research in its historical context.

Sarah Hake is adjunct professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and center director of the USDA Plant Gene Expression Center. She was among the first plant scientists to discover homeoboxes in plants, a major discovery that has created a new subfield in plant science.


Fred Wilt is professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been an active researcher for years and is recognized for fundamental contributions in the regulation of gene expression in marine invertebrate embryos. For many years he was an associate editor of the flagship journal in the field, Developmental Biology.