Alexandre H
Embryology Department, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, University of Mons-Hainaut, Belgium.
Int J Dev Biol. 2001;45(1):67-72.
Albert BRACHET, founder of the Brussels School of embryology, conducted delicate experiments in which he selectively destroyed zones of the grey crescent with heated needles. This allowed him to observe, in 1923, that the median region of the grey crescent of the blastula is a area of spontaneous differentiation and that this "primary self-differentiation centre" organizes the axial organs in anurans. It is thus fair to say that A. BRACHET contributed significantly to the emergence of the organizer concept. Albert DALCQ and Jean PASTEELS, successors of A. BRACHET, trying to solve the problem of the organizer's determination, proposed their famous quantitative theory of embryonic development resulting in the concept of morphogenetic potential, which increases with the CV concentration, a combination of a cortical constituent C and a vegetal substance V. Jean BRACHET, the younger son of A. BRACHET and one of the founding father of molecular biology and embryology, was soon convinced that the organizer owes its inducing power to a chemical substance. Being the first to suggest the role of RNA in protein synthesis, he first imagined that RNA could be the active substance in induction but became convinced afterwards that the inducer must have a proteic nature. His interest in the molecular aspects of induction stimulated research that was to make chemical embryology molecular.
布鲁塞尔胚胎学学派的创始人阿尔贝·布拉谢进行了精细的实验，他用加热的针选择性地破坏了灰色新月区。这使他在1923年观察到囊胚灰色新月区的中间区域是一个自发分化区域，并且这个“初级自我分化中心”在无尾两栖类动物中组织形成轴向器官。因此可以说，阿尔贝·布拉谢对组织者概念的出现做出了重大贡献。阿尔贝·达尔克和让·帕斯特尔斯是阿尔贝·布拉谢的继任者，他们试图解决组织者的决定因素问题，提出了著名的胚胎发育定量理论，从而产生了形态发生潜能的概念，该潜能随着CV浓度的增加而增加，CV是一种皮质成分C和一种植物性物质V的组合。阿尔贝·布拉谢的小儿子让·布拉谢是分子生物学和胚胎学的奠基人之一，他很快就确信组织者的诱导能力归因于一种化学物质。作为第一个提出RNA在蛋白质合成中作用的人，他最初设想RNA可能是诱导中的活性物质，但后来确信诱导物一定具有蛋白质性质。他对诱导分子方面的兴趣激发了相关研究，这些研究使化学胚胎学走向分子层面。
