New Patterns in Genetics and Development [antikvár]

Preface - THIS book is based on a set of six Jesup Lectures, given at Columbia University during April and May, 1961. An invitation to contribute to a series as well known as this faces its recipient with a somewhat daunting challenge. He is, I suppose, expected to produce something new; something, moreover, which falls a bit outside the regular well-charted paths of scientific advance of which everyone is already fully aware; and finally, something of his own. My attempt to meet this challenge takes the form of a discussion of two problems, one rather new and one very old. The new problem is the impact of the recent great advances in genetics on our understanding of the development of multicellular organisms. This subject has often been touched on by geneticists but has received less attention from authors who are fully conversant with the embryological material. The old problem is the ancient conundrum of morphogenesisthe appearance of organized structure within a vast range of sizes from the cellular organelle to the elephant. Present-day biology, which is dominated by the enormous successes of biochemistry, has tended to neglect these structures which are too large to be handled by biochemical methods; but they still confront us as one of the most insistent and least understood characteristics of living things. Some may feel that the sensible thing to do at present about these structures is to leave them alone in hops that the progress of biochemistry will eventually throw up some new clue; but to others, including myself, they have the attraction of a real frontier, a region where one is not just trying to fill in an already existing sketch map, but where one has to try to figure out the bare bones of the geography from scratch.A short set of lectures such as this cannot, of course, attempt to be comprehensive in the treatment even of the topics chosen for discussion, and the desirability of describing some of the work of my own laboratory