General embryological information service - HPS Repository

treatment of mouse inner cell mass); Masui et a1., Schorderet-Slatkine et
at. (divalent cations in maturation and activation of anuran eggs) ; Whitt
et at. (enzyme ontogeny and gene expression in sunfish hybrids)
DEVELOPMENTAL GENETICS, EVOLUTION (see also 38,50,70,76,79,97)
Textbooks
98.
J.B.GURDON, 1978. GENE EXPRESSION DURING CELL DIFFERENTIATION. 2nd edit.
Carolina Biology Supply Comp., Burlington. Carolina Biology Readers no. 25.
32 pp. , 29 figs.
This is an entirely rewritten and much enlarged version of the first edition
(1973). It is very readable and thoroughly modern. Many new figures
have been added and old ones improved.
(This reviewer still takes exception to the statement that there is no
known way of making a cell committed to one kind of differentiation change
(directly?) into a cell of another kind - cases of "transdif ferentiation"
have been documented in insects 1)
Monographs
.
99.
S.J.GOULD. 1977. ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY
Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass, XVI, 501 pp., 71 figs., 9 tabs., combined
index to subjects, organisms and authors. $ 18.50, £ 12.95
Contents: 1. Prospectus; I. Recapitulation: 2. The analogistic tradition
from Anaximander to Bonnet; 3, Transcendental origins, 1793-1850; 4. Evolutionary
triumph, 1859-1900; 5. Pervasive influence; 6. Decline, fall and
generalization; II. Heterochrony and paedomorphosis: 7. Heterochrony and
the parallel of ontogeny and phylogeny; 8. The ecological and evolutionary
significance of heterochrony; 9. Progenesis and neoteny; 10. Retardation
and neoteny in human evolution; 11. Epilogue
This erudite and scholarly work has already been extensively and critically
reviewed in the scientific press (see Science 199, Nature 272, Amer.
Scientist 66). We will therefore only briefly characterise it here.
The first part of the book is historical and makes delightful reading not
only for biologists but for any cultured person. (Ch.5 has brief excursions
into criminal anthropology, racism, child development, primary education
and psychoanalysis.)
The second part is intended as "a reasonably complete analysis of current
theory", but it is also full of original, thought-provoking ideas. It begins
by discussing four questions: How shall we depict phylogeny?; How can ontogeny
be related to phylogeny?; How are parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny
produced?; Which is more important in producing these parallels, the
shifting of stages by acceleration and retardation, or by prolongation and
truncation? It appears in the chapters that follow that the author places
much emphasis on paedomorphosis and the two distinct processes that give
rise to it: progenesis and neoteny. Both can yield "rapid and profound evolutionary
change in a Darwinian fashion without the spectre of macromutation".
Inasmuch as paedomorphosis is an instance of heterochrony, and heterochrony
is tantamount to developmental regulation, the author believes that
"an understanding of regulation must lie at the centre of any rapprochement
between molecular and
development"
evolutionary biology [via] the common field of
Two features of Part Two worth highlighting are a critique of G.R.de Beer's
.
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