Structural and functional development
These two categories cannot be regarded as a pair of opposites as were the previous pairs in this list; rather, they are two aspects of all processes of biological development and can be separated only conceptually, and for purposes of convenience of description. Function is the capacity of the biological system to carry out operations. At the level of the organism, these operations include walking, swimming, eating, digesting, etc.; at the cell level, typical functions are respiring, contracting, conducting nervous impulses, secreting hormones, etc.; and at the molecular level, all functions depend on the production of enzymes, coded by particular genes. Structure encompasses all parts of the organism capable of carrying out functions localized within the body of the organism and arranged in some particular spatial pattern. Contractile cells, for example, are grouped together to form muscle, and other cells are grouped together to form elements of the skeleton; both the muscles and the skeletal elements have definite spatial relations to each other.
These two aspects of development—function and structure—are not opposed to each other in any way. On the contrary, it is obvious that the higher level functions are clearly dependent on the proper structural relations and functions of cell systems. Even at the basic cellular or molecular levels, secretion or nervous conduction essentially depends upon the proper structural relation of the subcellular elements. It is, however, often convenient to focus discussion on one or other of these two aspects of development; for instance, a study may be made into the developmental processes that bring about the production of hemoglobin or insulin by a certain kind of cell, without at the moment being concerned with structural problems. Or again, the focus may be on the results of a certain process by which a mass of cells develops into a typical hand with five digits. In such an inquiry the structural aspects are paramount.
Normal and abnormal development
If a number of fertilized eggs of a given species are provided with conditions that enable them to develop at all, they will, with extraordinary regularity, develop into exceedingly similar adult organisms. The range of conditions they can tolerate is rather wide, and the similarity of the end products surprisingly complete. There are, indeed, good grounds for recognizing what must be considered normal development. The situation is perhaps more marked in animals than in plants, since the plants produced from a given batch of seed under a variety of environmental conditions often present considerably greater variation than is commonly found among animals. Even among plants, however, the differences produced by different conditions of cultivation are usually no more than quantitative differences in size and number of such organs as leaves and flowers, so that an individual can be described as well or poorly developed rather than as normally or abnormally developed. It is only in relatively few cases that a plant develops in quite different ways under two different conditions, neither of which can be considered abnormal or normal. In certain aquatic plants, for instance, the shape of the emergent leaves is different from the leaves that develop underwater. In such cases the plant actually has two normal forms of development.
It is possible, of course, to produce abnormal organisms by submitting a developing system to stimuli not usually encountered in a normal environment, such as certain chemicals. The presence of unusual genes also may result in deviations from the normal processes of development. In the vast majority of cases such abnormalities can be regarded as resulting from failure to carry out fully the normal processes of development. Functional abnormality in the adult consists in the failure of the system to produce a certain enzyme or functional cell type; a structural abnormality consists in the unusual appearance of certain component elements or in their arrangement in incompletely realized patterns. It is extremely rare to find examples in which the abnormality consists in the addition of a new enzyme not produced in normal development, or the formation of a new structural pattern of the elements.
One very important type of development that, from some points of view, can be considered as an exception to the rule that abnormal development is nearly always retrogressive, is carcinogenesis, the production of tumours. Carcinogenesis involves a change in the developmental behaviour of a group of cells. Initially, it often involves a loss of some of the functional and structural characteristics that previously appeared in the cells. It is commonly followed, however, by the assumption of new properties, which however untoward they may be for the host animal, must be considered as a progressive type: the cells often grow faster and multiply sooner than the noncancerous cells, for example. Furthermore, the cells may undergo a sequence of changes in character and in their arrangement within the tumour. All these features can be regarded in a developmental sense as progressive.
In view of the great rarity of cases of abnormal development that lead to progressive changes, it seems to follow that the organs produced during the normal development of any given species actually exhaust all the potentialities of its genotype for the production of orderly functional structures. It appears that the only abnormal developments that can be produced are either displacements of normal organs, or inadequacies in carrying out normal processes, or the initiation of progressive but quite disorderly processes, as in the production of tumours.
General systems of development
Development of single-celled organisms
In viruses, activities consist in the production, aided by the machinery of a host cell, of units for building new virus or phage particles: development is simply the assemblage of these constituent units.
In the next higher grade of biological organization, the organism consists of a single cell. Many single-celled algae produce special forms of cells that correspond to the sex cells, or gametes; these cells may unite in fertilization, the resulting fertilized egg, or zygote, undergoing a short period of development. In many other single-celled organisms, however, reproduction takes place by the simple division of an original cell into two daughter cells. In such forms, development normally is part of the process of subdivision. It involves the remodelling of the parent cell into two smaller cells, which are then separated by the division. Something similar must, of course, be involved in the division of cells of higher organisms also. In many single-celled organisms, however, the cell contains a number of defined parts, which are arranged in very definite ways, so that the process of remodelling is very striking and easily observed. This is so, for instance, with ciliated protozoans, in which the cortex is provided with a large number of hairlike cilia or other appendages, arranged in precise patterns, and often with such other structures as a mouth or a gullet. These structures are reproduced in two identical but smaller copies during cell division. This does not necessarily imply that no other developmental processes are possible. The process of regeneration of parts removed occurs quite independently of cell division, for example.
Open and closed systems of development
There is a marked difference between the general system of development in multicellular plants and multicellular animals. In a plant, certain groups of cells retain throughout the whole life of the plant an embryonic capability to give rise to many types of cells. These regions, known as meristems, occur at the growing tips of branches and roots and as a cylindrical sheath around the stem. They consist of rapidly dividing cells capable of assembling into groups that form buds from which may arise new stems, leaves, flowers, or roots.
By contrast, most animals have no special regions that retain an embryonic character. In most forms, the whole egg, and the whole collection of cells immediately derived from it, take part in the developmental processes and form parts of the developing embryo. In some forms that go through a number of larval stages, the development of certain cells is interrupted at an early stage, and they are set aside and resume their development to form a later type of larva, or to form the adult after the larval stages are completed. An example would be the imaginal buds of some insects. The cells of these buds cannot be regarded as retaining a fully embryonic character comparable to that of the plant meristems, since they cannot perform all the developmental processes but only those involved in the production of the particular late-larval or adult structure for which they have been set aside. In general, then, plants remain embryonic in character, capable as it were of starting again from the beginning to carry out the entire developmental process. Their development is, in this sense, “open.” Most animals, on the other hand, lack persistently embryonic cells of this kind, and their development may be characterized as “closed.” (There may be certain exceptions to this in very simple forms, such as flatworms, in which certain cells called neoblasts seem able to participate in any type of development; these cells are usually scattered throughout the body, and the major developmental processes that bring into being the general form of the organism cannot be attributed to them, as the development of the plant can be attributed to the meristems.)
Blastogenesis versus embryogenesis
Some animals possess a second system of development, in contrast to the “closed” embryonic system emphasized in the last section. In its most fully developed form, this system consists in remodelling a portion of the parental body into a new organism without any involvement of eggs or sperm. In an adult hydra, a microscopic aquatic animal, a portion of the body may begin to grow exceptionally fast; its cells differentiate into the various cell types and become molded into the constituent organs to build up a new individual identical to the parent. The group of cells responsible for this behaviour is, in its early stages, referred to as a bud, or blastema. Before they become activated these cells may appear quite indistinguishable from the other cells of the body and betray no embryonic capability comparable to the meristems of plants.
In some higher organisms, including certain insects, reptiles, and amphibians, incomplete but still fairly extensive new developments of a similar kind may take place. They require the stimulus of an injury, however, which may involve the removal of part of the normal body. The usual result is a new development to regenerate, or replace, the missing part. The first stage in such regenerative processes consists in the formation of a blastema, that is, a group of rapidly dividing cells that shows little sign of cellular specialization. The evidence indicates that they may not arise, as was once thought, from persisting embryonic cells scattered within the adult body, but instead are formed of cells near the position of the injury. These cells lose their normal adult character and become capable of developing into most of the tissues required to replace the parts removed by the injury.
Development from a blastema, or blastogenesis, presents many contrasts to embryogenesis, the normal form of development from a fertilized egg. In blastogenesis, tissues that, during embryonic development, appear in sequence one after another, may be formed simultaneously and without any obvious sequential relations. Very little, however, is as yet understood about the mechanisms by which the various tissues within the blastema become differentiated from one another. It may well be that these mechanisms are more similar to those found in embryonic development than appears at first sight.
Constituent processes of development
Growth
As was pointed out earlier, developing systems normally increase in size, at least during part of their development. “Growth” is a general term used to cover this phenomenon. It comprises two main aspects: (1) increase in cell numbers by cell division and (2) increase in cell size. These two processes may in some examples occur quite separately from each other; for instance, cells in certain rapidly growing tissues (e.g., the connective tissue or blood-forming systems in vertebrates) may increase greatly in number, while the cells remain approximately the same size. Alternatively, in some organs (e.g., the salivary glands of insects) the cells may increase greatly while remaining the same in number, each cell becoming enlarged, or hypertrophied. In such greatly enlarged cells there is often duplication of the genes, involving an increase in the DNA content of the nucleus, although no cell division takes place, and the nucleus continues as a single body, although with a multiplied, or “polyploid,” set of chromosomes.
In very many cases, however, the growth of an organ depends on increases both in cell number and in cell size. The relative importance of these two processes has yet to be properly investigated. One case that has been well studied is the size of the wings of the fruit fly Drosophila. The number of cells in the wing can be easily determined, since each bears a single hair that can be seen and counted in simple microscopic preparations. It has been found that there is an accommodation of factors: if there is an unusually large number of cells, these may be somewhat smaller than usual, so that the total size of the wing remains relatively unchanged.
Perhaps the major theoretical difficulty in the concept of growth is that it is a quantitative notion attached to an ill-defined entity. Growth is an increase in size; but size of what? If a cell or organ increases in volume merely by the absorption of water, or by the laying down of a mineral substance such as calcium carbonate, is this to be regarded as growth or not?
