Watch a single Cell become a Complete Organism

The miracle of life: Watch a single cell become a complete organism in six pulsing minutes of timelapse.

Native to central and southern Europe, the amphibious alpine newt breeds in shallow water, where its larvae are born, hatch and feed on plankton, before sprouting legs and moving to land. This timelapse video from the Dutch director Jan van IJken tracks the development of a single-celled zygote into the hatched larva of an alpine newt. Captured in stunning detail at microscopic scales, Becoming is a remarkable look at the process of cell division and differentiation, whence all animals – from newts to humans – come.

A film by Jan van IJken (www.janvanijken.com)

[Youtube]