The Biological Problem of To-day: Preformation Or Epigenesis?: The Basis of a Theory of Organic DevelopmentHertwig, Oscar
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The Biological Problem of To-day: Preformation Or Epigenesis?: The Basis of a Theory of Organic Development
Hertwig, Oscar
Developmental biology; Embryology; Genetics
In another experiment, taking a triton's eggs after they had divided into
two spheres, I surrounded them with a silk thread in the plane of the first
cleavage, and tightened the thread until the embryo assumed the form of a
sand-glass. The deformity of the resulting larvæ was very different, and
perhaps depended on the tightness of the constriction. Some became greatly
elongated, and had developed so that the thread surrounded the dorsal
nerve-cord. In other cases the dorsally-placed organs arose only from
one-half of the sand-glass-shaped embryo, while the other half gave rise to
the ventral part of the body. In this case the dorsal organs (nerve-tube
and notochord) were doubled over like a snare, the head and tail ends, the
mouth and the region of the anus, being bent in at the position of the
constricting thread.
The important point is that in both the experiments, in the case of the
frog and of the triton, the cell-material, separated at the first cleavage,
was turned to a use quite different to its use in the formation of a normal
embryo.
We may conclude with a very convincing proof. In the above-mentioned
abnormal development of the frog's egg it happened that one edge of the
blastopore, on account of its weight, was very much bent outwards. In
consequence of this the cleft of the blastopore lay between the normal
blastopore-lip and the everted border of the other lip. When the notochord
and the nerve-plate appeared, as a result of this abnormal condition, they
grew from a cell-material that was quite different to that which gives them
origin in normal cases.[15]
In these cases Weismann cannot apply his accessory conception, the
existence of supplementary idioplasm, only to the nuclei arising from the
first division; he must extend it to the thousands of embryonic cells that
arise by division up to the time for the appearance of the nerve-tube and
notochord. The behaviour of these cells under fortuitously changed
conditions shows them all to be endowed with the capacity of development in
different directions.
FIFTH GROUP OF FACTS.--PHENOMENA OF VEGETATIVE AFFINITY.[16]
Many considerations, taken from the region of general physiology, support
the view that all the cells of an individual, of any species, are alike,
and are to be distinguished from one another only by the special
development of one character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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