Morphogenesis and metabolism: studies with the cartesian diver ultramicromanometer I. Anaerobic glycolysis of the regions of the amphibian gastrula

Abstract

During the past thirty years our knowledge of the mechanism of morphogenesis has been pushed further forward in the case of the amphibia than in that, perhaps, of any other developmental type. More recently, the facts which have been established by the experimental embryologists have become the subject of biochemical experimentation. The general upshot has been a realization of the extremely close relationships which exist between normal metabolic processes and normal morphogenesis, especially as reagards the formation of the primary neural axis in which the action of the evocator in the dorsal lip of the blastopore is involved. A knowledge of the metabolic processes normally preceding and accompanying the liberation of the primary evocator in the dorsal lip of the blastopore will evidently give us a clearer picture of the exact nature of the connextion between metabolism and morphogenesis in the gastrula. A morphogenetic hormone, the effect of which must surely be the ordering of protein molecules in cell and tissue architecture, does not arise from nowhere; it has a metabolic origin and metabolic relationships.