Introduction -- From embryology to developmental biology -- The origin of multicellularity -- Size and evolution -- The evolution of signaling -- The basic elements of multicellular development -- Development in the cellular slime molds -- Conclusion
Summary
The enormous recent success of molecular developmental biology has yielded a vast amount of new information on the details of development. So much so that we risk losing sight of the underlying principles that apply to all development. To cut through this thicket, John Tyler Bonner ponders a moment in evolution when development was at its most basic--the moment when signaling between cells began. Although multicellularity arose numerous times, most of those events happened many millions of years ago. Many of the details of development that we see today, even in simple organisms, accrued over a long evolutionary timeline, and the initial events are obscured. The relatively uncomplicated and easy-to-grow cellular slime molds offer a unique opportunity to analyze development at a primitive stage and perhaps gain insight into how early multicellular development might have started. --From publisher's description
Analysis
JSTOR-DDA
Developmental biology
Developmental cytology
Cells Evolution
Cell interaction
Multi-User
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 135-142) and index
