We're not going to run out of new anatomy anytime soon

DNA, Cell Context, and Developmental Information

• Multiple commenters question the idea that “it’s all encoded in DNA,” stressing:
  • The zygote’s pre-existing structure, maternal environment, and epigenetic factors.
  • Maternal-effect molecules (mRNA, proteins) in the egg affecting early development.
  • Cell-level “navigation” guided by bioelectric fields or chemical gradients.
• Some argue you cannot “clean build” a human from DNA alone:
  • Need an existing cell as “compiler” and maternal physiology as part of the “program.”
  • DNA may describe transformations of existing cellular structures, not how to build them from scratch.
• Others compare DNA to compressed code, package manifests, or bindings to shared protein “libraries,” not a full blueprint.

Anatomical Knowledge Gaps and Incentives

• Surprise that essentially no one has a full-time job “just discovering anatomy.”
• Structural discovery is often a byproduct of surgery, imaging, or pathology, not a central goal.
• Funding and career incentives reward work that fits into existing frameworks, not “we found a weird new thing with unknown function.”
• Complaints that big-budget physics gets funding, while paleontology, anatomy, and fossil prep are chronically underfunded.

Bias, Neglected Regions, and Historical Oversights

• Several note prudishness/sexism and historical religious pressures as reasons for neglected female anatomy and reproductive structures.
• Examples: late appreciation of clitoral complexity, debate over the G-spot, reevaluation of “vestigial” organs like the appendix and thymus.
• Others caution that current perspectives are also biased; “bias” itself isn’t inherently bad but shapes what gets studied.

Variability and the Scale of the Problem

• Reports that major nerves (e.g., vagus) show extreme individual variability in branching and routing.
• Suggestion that gross anatomy is far from “finished” and clinical use requires detailed variation mapping across many individuals.

Tools, Imaging, and AI

• Suggestions that better tools, not just more surgeons/cadavers, are needed:
  • High-resolution whole-body imaging datasets shared openly.
  • Cheap, open ultrasound hardware and improved in vivo imaging.
  • Knife-edge scanning microscopes and whole-organism 3D atlases.
• Hopes that AI could help integrate and interpret massive anatomical datasets, though details remain unclear.