More than a century ago, Ernst Haeckel created embryo drawings to illustrate the morphological similarity of vertebrate early embryos. These drawings have been both widely presented and frequently criticized. At the same time that the idea of morphological similarity was recently attacked, there has been a growing realization of molecular similarities in the development of tissues and organs. We have surveyed genes expressed in vertebrate embryos, and we have used them to construct drawings that we call Molecular Haeckels. The Molecular Haeckels emphasize that, based on gene expression, there is a greater similarity among vertebrate embryos than even Haeckel might have imagined.
(c) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.