Mirth Christen K, Shingleton Alexander W
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
Front Cell Dev Biol. 2019 Feb 6;7:8. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2019.00008. eCollection 2019.
Our developmental environment significantly affects myriad aspects of our biology, including key life history traits, morphology, physiology, and our susceptibility to disease. This environmentally-induced variation in phenotype is known as plasticity. In many cases, plasticity results from alterations in the rate of synthesis of important developmental hormones. However, while developmental processes like organ growth are sensitive to environmental conditions, others like patterning - the process that generates distinct cell identities - remain robust to perturbation. This is particularly surprising given that the same hormones that regulate organ growth also regulate organ patterning. In this review, we revisit the current approaches that address how organs coordinate their growth and pattern, and outline our hypotheses for understanding how organs achieve correct pattern across a range of sizes.
我们的发育环境会显著影响生物学的诸多方面，包括关键的生命史特征、形态学、生理学以及我们对疾病的易感性。这种由环境诱导的表型变异被称为可塑性。在许多情况下，可塑性源于重要发育激素合成速率的改变。然而，虽然像器官生长这样的发育过程对环境条件敏感，但其他过程，如模式形成——产生不同细胞身份的过程——对扰动仍具有稳健性。鉴于调节器官生长的激素同样也调节器官模式形成，这一点尤其令人惊讶。在本综述中，我们重新审视了当前关于器官如何协调其生长和模式的研究方法，并概述了我们对于理解器官如何在一系列大小范围内实现正确模式的假设。
