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Development of Multicellular Organisms 21
An animal or plant starts its life as a single cell—a fertilized egg, or zygote. During development, this cell divides repeatedly to produce many different kinds of cells, arranged in a final pattern of spectacular complexity and precision. The goal of developmental cell biology is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that direct this amazing transformation (Movie 21.1).
Plants and animals have very different ways of life, and they use different developmental strategies; in this chapter, we focus mainly on animals. Four processes are fundamental to animal development: (1) cell proliferation, which produces many cells from one; (2) cell–cell interactions, which coordinate the behavior of each cell with that of its neighbors; (3) cell specialization, or differentiation, which creates cells with different characteristics at different positions; and (4) cell movement, which rearranges the cells to form structured tissues and organs (Figure 21–1). It is on the fourth point that plant development differs radically: plant cells are unable to migrate or move independently through the embryo because each one is contained within a cell wall, through which it is cemented to its neighbors, as discussed in Chapter 19.
In a developing animal embryo, the four fundamental processes are happening in a kaleidoscopic variety of ways, as they give rise to different parts of the organism. Like the members of an orchestra, the cells in the embryo have to play their individual parts in a highly coordinated manner. In the embryo, however, there is no conductor—no central authority—to direct the performance. Instead, development is a self-assembly process in which the cells, as they grow and proliferate, organize themselves into increasingly complex structures. Each of the millions of cells has to choose for itself how to behave, selectively utilizing the genetic instructions in its chromosomes.