The Geometry of Morphogenesis and the Morphogenetic Field Concept

TL;DR

This paper proposes a theoretical framework linking molecular codes, cell events, and morphogenetic fields to explain how organism geometry develops during morphogenesis, beyond gene expression patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a novel concept of a morphogenetic field and a molecular coding scheme on cell surfaces to connect biological information with organism shape formation.

Findings

Proposes coding by glycoconjugate oligosaccharides on cell surfaces.

Defines development as a tree of cell events.

Suggests a model connecting molecular codes, cell motion laws, and embryo geometry.

Abstract

The process of morphogenesis, which can be defined as an evolution of the form of an organism, is one of the most intriguing mysteries in the life sciences. It is clear, that gene expression patterns cannot explain the development of the precise geometry of an organism and its parts in space. Here, we suggest a set of postulates and possible approaches for discovering the correspondence between molecular biological information and its realization in a given geometry of an organism in space-time. First, we suggest that the geometry of the organism and its parts is coded by a molecular code located on the cell surfaces in such a way that, with each cell, there can be associated a corresponding matrix, containing this code. As a particular model, we propose coding by several types of oligosaccharide residues of glycoconjugates. Second, we provide a notion of cell event, and suggest a description of development as a tree of cell events, where under cell event we understand the changing of cell state, e.g. the processes of cell division, cell growth/death, shift or differentiation. Next we suggest describing these cell motion laws using the notion of a "morphogenetic field", meaning by the field an object in an "event space" over a "cell space", which govern the transformation of the coded biological information into an instructive signal for a cell event for a given cell, depending on the position of a cell in the developing embryo. The matrix on a cell surface will be changed after each cell event according to the rule(s) dictated by the morphogenetic field of an organism. Finally, we provide some ideas on the connection between morphogenetic code on a cell surface, cell motion law(s) and the geometry of an embryo.