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Morphogenesis (from the Greek morphê shape and genesis creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of developmental biology along with the control of tissue growth and patterning of cellular differentiation .
Differentiation dramatically changes a cell's size, shape, membrane potential, metabolic activity, and responsiveness to signals. These changes are largely due to highly controlled modifications in gene expression and are the study of epigenetics. With a few exceptions, cellular differentiation almost never involves a change in the DNA sequence ...
Morphogenesis relates to the formation of a three-dimensional shape. It mainly involves the orchestrated movements of cell sheets and of individual cells. Morphogenesis is important for creating the three germ layers of the early embryo (ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm) and for building up complex structures during organ development.
Cell division orientation is one of the mechanisms that shapes tissue during development and morphogenesis. Along with cell shape changes, cell rearrangements, apoptosis and growth, oriented cell division modifies the geometry and topology of live tissue in order to create new organs and shape the organisms.
Metaplasia occurs when a cell of a certain type is replaced by another cell type, which may be less differentiated. It is a reversible process thought to be caused by stem cell reprogramming. Stem cells are found in epithelia and embryonic mesenchyme of connective tissue. A prominent example of metaplasia involves the changes associated with ...
It generally involves drastic changes in cell shape which are driven by the cytoskeleton. Two very distinct migration scenarios are crawling motion (most commonly studied) and blebbing motility. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] A paradigmatic example of crawling motion is the case of fish epidermal keratocytes, which have been extensively used in research and teaching.
It is characterised by the process of cell division and cellular differentiation of the embryo that occurs during the early stages of development. In biological terms, human development entails growth from a one-celled zygote to an adult human being. Fertilization occurs when the sperm cell successfully enters and fuses with an egg cell . [2]
This kind of positive feedback at the single cell level and tissue level is responsible for symmetry breaking, which is an all-or-none process whereas once the symmetry is broken, the cells involved become very different. Symmetry breaking leads to a bistable or multistable system where the cell or cells involved are determined for different ...