Integrating Organ Systems, Developmental Canalization and Asymmetry

Abstract

Tissues and organ systems in vertebrate embryos develop as a result of cascades of inductive interactions that activate the developmental programme for that particular tissue or organ. Although we know a great deal about inductive events for some tissues, organs and regions of individual embryos, we cannot yet produce a complete epigenetic blueprint for a single embryo. It is therefore important to identify further interactive cascades, to understand their cellular, molecular and genetic bases, and to incorporate them into modern approaches to functional morphology on the one hand, and models of morphological change in development and evolution on the other.¹

‘Mechanisms for ensuring developmental stability are as crucial for maintaining the continuity of a species as the basic information for encoding gene products in the DNA itself.’ Wilkins, 1997, p. 261