TY  - JOUR
TI  - Before programs: The physical origination of multicellular forms
AU  - Newman, StuartA.
AU  - Forgacs, Gabor
AU  - Muller, GerdB.
T2  - The International Journal of Developmental Biology
AB  - By examining the formative role of physical processes in modern-day developmental systems, we infer that although such determinants are subject to constraints and rarely act in a "pure" fashion, they are identical to processes generic to all viscoelastic, chemically excitable media, non-living as well as living. The processes considered are free diffusion, immiscible liquid behavior, oscillation and multistability of chemical state, reaction-diffusion coupling and mechanochemical responsivity. We suggest that such processes had freer reign at early stages in the history of multicellular life, when less evolution had occurred of genetic mechanisms for stabilization and entrenchment of functionally successful morphologies. From this we devise a hypothetical scenario for pattern formation and morphogenesis in the earliest metazoa. We show that the expected morphologies that would arise during this relatively unconstrained "physical" stage of evolution correspond to the hollow, multilayered and segmented morphotypes seen in the gastrulation stage embryos of modern-day metazoa as well as in Ediacaran fossil deposits of ~600 Ma. We suggest several ways in which organisms that were originally formed by predominantly physical mechanisms could have evolved genetic mechanisms to perpetuate their morphologies.
PY  - 2006
DO  - 10.1387/ijdb.052049sn
VL  - 50
IS  - 2-3
SP  - 289
EP  - 299
J2  - Int. J. Dev. Biol.
LA  - en
SN  - 0214-6282
SN  - 1696-3547
UR  - https://ijdb.ehu.eus/article/052049sn
Y2  - 2024/11/05/17:21:17
ER  -