Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast. Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett. Just as people in different places seem to operate at different rhythms, so do different species. But that presents

a mystery. What governs their varied timing? A new flurry of research suggests that cells use

metabolic processes as clocks. That's next. You've learned from Quanta. Now we want to learn from you.

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Different species age at their own rates. Some, like the fruit fly, race to adulthood so they can

reproduce before their food source disappears. Humans mature slowly over decades, in part because

building a large, complex brain requires it. At the very beginning of an embryo's life, small tweaks in the

timing of when and how different tissues develop can dramatically alter an organism's form,

a mechanism that evolution exploits in creating new species. But what sets the tempo of an organism's

growth has remained a mystery. Margueretta Diaz Quadros

leads research focused on developmental tempo and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Understanding developmental timing is a really fundamental question that to me is one of the

most understudied areas in developmental biology. And our

knowledge of what controls developmental timing has really lagged behind other areas in developmental

biology. So we are coming in and we have an opportunity because it is so understudy to make

some really fundamental discoveries and descriptions, which I'm really excited about.

And I also think there are many labs now starting to work on this.

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