This course focuses on how the spatial and temporal readout of the genome is achieved during development, and conversely on how forced changes in gene expression patterns can affect developmental processes. The philosophy of the course is that “development never ends” and thus examples of processes from normal or pathological embryonic, adult and aging systems may be discussed. Each session focuses on one or more fundamental principles of developmental biology/genomics using papers from the literature to illustrate the principle(s). Every effort is made to demystify developmental biology and discuss state-of-the-art experimental approaches to address questions about the genes required for normal development. While much teaching is in the form of student presentations from the primary literature, one-hour introductions are given by the course guides on each topic in the Tuesday lecture. The goal of the course is to enable students to read papers in the areas of developmental biology and genomics, to critically evaluate them, and to propose experiments that will answer questions raised in the paper.