The Dance of Life

How does life begin? What drives a newly fertilized egg to keep dividing and growing until it becomes 40 trillion cells, a greater number than stars in the galaxy? How do these cells know how to make a human, from lips to kidneys to toes?

Magdalena was pregnant at 44 when a routine genetic test came back with that dreaded word: abnormal. A quarter of her sampled sells contained abnormalities and she was warned her baby had an increased risk of being miscarried or born with birth defects. Fortunately, Magdalena was also a leading developmental biologist and fuelled by her maternal instinct and her own cutting-edge research, she continued with her pregnancy. Six months later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and her research went on to prove that - as she had suspected - the human embryo has an amazing and previously unknown ability to correct abnormal cells at an early stage of its development.

The Dance Of Life will take you inside the incredible world of life just as it begins and reveal the wonder of the earliest and most profound moment in how we become human. Through Magda's trailblazing research as a Professor at Cambridge - where she has doubled the survival time of human embryos in the laboratory, and made first the artificial embryos from stem cells - you'll discover how early life is programmed to repair and organise itself, what this means for the future of pregnancy, and how we might solve IVF disorders, prevent miscarriages and learn more about the dance of life as it starts to take shape.

The Dance Of Life is a moving celebration of the balletic beauty of life's beginnings.