โ Scribed by A.E.R. Woodcock
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Catastrophe theory can be used to illustrate the results of some of the events that occur during embryogenesis. Trajectories over the surface of catastrophe manifolds provide an extension of Waddington's concept of a description of embryogenesis based on chreodic paths on an epigenetic landscape. The development of Elementary Catastrophe Theory to describe time-and space-equivalent events provides a rich qualitative "language" that seems well suited for the description of cellular behavior. Space-equivalent catastrophes have been used to illustrate the processes of cellular determination, differentiation, and transdetermination with initial success. This use should be tested further, for example, by experimental manipulation of embryonic tissue at well 'defined intervals of time during its development.' The relationship of this approach to some others and to possible future theoretical developments has been discussed.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
Genetic variation and selection may seem adequate to account for evolutionary adaptation and improvement of single-cell organisms, but they are hardly sufficient to account for the evolution of complex organisms that comprise whole societies of cells that are assembled and reassembled in each succee