![Morphogenetic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Morphogenetic.gif)
In the
developmental biology
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which animals and plants grow and develop. Developmental biology also encompasses the biology of Regeneration (biology), regeneration, asexual reproduction, metamorphosis, and the growth and di ...
of the early twentieth century, a morphogenetic field is a group of
cell
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
Cell may also refer to:
Locations
* Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...
s able to respond to discrete, localized
biochemical
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology an ...
signals leading to the
development of specific morphological structures or
organs.
The
spatial and
temporal extents of the embryonic field are dynamic, and within the field is a collection of interacting cells out of which a particular organ is formed.
As a group, the cells within a given morphogenetic field are constrained: thus, cells in a ''limb field'' will become a limb tissue, those in a ''
cardiac
The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to t ...
field'' will become heart tissue.
However, specific cellular programming of individual cells in a field is flexible: an individual cell in a cardiac field can be redirected via cell-to-cell signaling to replace specific damaged or missing cells.
Imaginal disc
An imaginal disc is one of the parts of a holometabolous insect larva that will become a portion of the outside of the adult insect during the pupal transformation. Contained within the body of the larva, there are pairs of discs that will form, ...
s in insect
larva
A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.
The ...
e are examples of morphogenetic fields.
Historical development
The concept of the morphogenetic field, fundamental in the early twentieth century to the study of embryological development, was first introduced in 1910 by
Alexander G. Gurwitsch.
[, with comment by SF Gilbert and JM Optiz.] Experimental support was provided by
Ross Granville Harrison
Ross Granville Harrison (January 13, 1870 – September 30, 1959) was an American biologist and anatomist credited for his pioneering work on animal tissue culture. His work also contributed to the understanding of embryonic development. Harrison ...
's experiments transplanting fragments of a newt embryo into different locations.
Harrison was able to identify "fields" of cells producing organs such as limbs, tail and gills and to show that these fields could be fragmented or have undifferentiated cells added and a complete normal final structure would still result. It was thus considered that it was the "field" of cells, rather than individual cells, that were patterned for subsequent development of particular organs. The field concept was developed further by Harrison's friend
Hans Spemann
Hans Spemann (; 27 June 1869 – 9 September 1941) was a German embryologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1935 for his student Hilde Mangold's discovery of the effect now known as embryonic induction, an influence ...
, and then by
Paul Weiss and others.
The concept was similar to the meaning of the term
entelechy
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his ''Physics'', ''Metaphysics'', ''Nicomachean Ethics'', and ''De Anima''.
The c ...
of vitalists like
Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch
Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (28 October 1867 – 17 April 1941) was a German biologist and philosopher from Bad Kreuznach. He is most noted for his early experimental work in embryology and for his neo-vitalist philosophy of entelechy. He has als ...
(1867–1941).
By the 1930s, however, the work of geneticists, especially
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan (September 25, 1866 – December 4, 1945) was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role tha ...
, revealed the importance of chromosomes and genes for controlling development, and the rise of the
new synthesis in evolutionary biology lessened the perceived importance of the field hypothesis. Morgan was a particularly harsh critic of fields since the gene and the field were perceived as competitors for recognition as the basic unit of
ontogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the stu ...
.
With the discovery and mapping of master control genes, such as the
homeobox
A homeobox is a DNA sequence, around 180 base pairs long, that regulates large-scale anatomical features in the early stages of embryonic development. For instance, mutations in a homeobox may change large-scale anatomical features of the full- ...
genes the pre-eminence of genes seemed assured. But in the late twentieth century the field concept was "rediscovered" as a useful part of developmental biology. It was found, for example, that different mutations could cause the same malformations, suggesting that the mutations were affecting a complex of structures as a unit, a unit that might correspond to the field of early 20th century embryology.
Scott Gilbert proposed that the morphogenetic field is a middle ground between genes and evolution.
That is, genes act upon fields, which then act upon the developing organism.
Jessica Bolker described morphogenetic fields not merely as incipient structures or organs, but as dynamic entities with their own localized development processes, which are central to the emerging field of
Evolutionary developmental biology
Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved.
The field grew from 19th-century beginni ...
("evo-devo").
In 2005,
Sean B. Carroll
Sean B. Carroll (born September 17, 1960) is an American Evolutionary developmental biology, evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer. He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Marylan ...
and colleagues mention morphogenetic fields only as a concept proposed by early embryologists to explain the finding that a forelimb bud could be transplanted and still give rise to a forelimb; they define "field" simply as "a discrete region" in an embryo.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*See a morphogenetic field model and simulation at: Lahoz-Beltra, R., Selem Mojica, N., Perales-Gravan, C., Navarro, J., Marijuan, P.C., 2008. Towards a Morphogenetic Field Theory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morphogenetic Field
Developmental biology