Chapter 8
Morphogenesis
8.1 Approaches to Morphogenesis
Morphogenesis is the summit of the sophistication and accomplishments of active
matter. It starts from an inseminated cell and ends with a miracle, a live creature.
Perhaps we will never understand this process in full detail. Perhaps Artificial Intelligence will one day unravel the entire chain of genetic and metabolic interactions.
Even then, receiving information from a black box will not qualify as our comprehension. The aim of our narrative is far more modest. We restrict to the observable
and measurable outcomes of those hidden processes being uncovered step by step
by biologists and biochemists.
Morphogenesis is directed genetically. In technical terms, the developing embryo
is a computer-operated factory, but its architecture is unlike anything invented by
ingenious primates. Unlike our most advanced computerized plants, the operation
is carried out on the molecular level. Both “software” and “hardware” are polymer
molecules, though of different kinds: nucleotides for information storage (DNA) and
transfer (RNA), and proteins for information retrieval and production. Small organic
molecules are used for some signaling functions.
The programming is stored in every processing unit. This might appear to be
wasteful, but it is an evolutionary necessity that served to eliminate egotism and
greed. Social insects eliminate conflicts in the same way, but it would not work with
conscious animals, as even identical twins may think differently; egotism is quelled
in our society in intricate ways, and not quite successfully. Cells do not think, and
they did not choose the way they would evolve into multicellular organisms. Dumb
replicators just multiply, producing more identical replicators of the same kind, and
let less successful competitors die away. Diverse bacteria are capable of communal
life in biofilms (Sect. 4.7) or in our guts, but their community is neither organized
nor integrated. Enslavement is an alternative to the suppression of genetic diversity;
this is what happened when an archean cell engulfed a bacterium, engaging it as
its power unit, the mitochondrion, and thereby turning into a eukaryotic cell. Take
171
L. Pismen, Active Matter Within and Around Us, The Frontiers Collection,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68421-1_8
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Morphogenesis
8.1 Approaches to Morphogenesis
Morphogenesis is the summit of the sophistication and accomplishments of active
matter. It starts from an inseminated cell and ends with a miracle, a live creature.
Perhaps we will never understand this process in full detail. Perhaps Artificial Intelligence will one day unravel the entire chain of genetic and metabolic interactions.
Even then, receiving information from a black box will not qualify as our comprehension. The aim of our narrative is far more modest. We restrict to the observable
and measurable outcomes of those hidden processes being uncovered step by step
by biologists and biochemists.
Morphogenesis is directed genetically. In technical terms, the developing embryo
is a computer-operated factory, but its architecture is unlike anything invented by
ingenious primates. Unlike our most advanced computerized plants, the operation
is carried out on the molecular level. Both “software” and “hardware” are polymer
molecules, though of different kinds: nucleotides for information storage (DNA) and
transfer (RNA), and proteins for information retrieval and production. Small organic
molecules are used for some signaling functions.
The programming is stored in every processing unit. This might appear to be
wasteful, but it is an evolutionary necessity that served to eliminate egotism and
greed. Social insects eliminate conflicts in the same way, but it would not work with
conscious animals, as even identical twins may think differently; egotism is quelled
in our society in intricate ways, and not quite successfully. Cells do not think, and
they did not choose the way they would evolve into multicellular organisms. Dumb
replicators just multiply, producing more identical replicators of the same kind, and
let less successful competitors die away. Diverse bacteria are capable of communal
life in biofilms (Sect. 4.7) or in our guts, but their community is neither organized
nor integrated. Enslavement is an alternative to the suppression of genetic diversity;
this is what happened when an archean cell engulfed a bacterium, engaging it as
its power unit, the mitochondrion, and thereby turning into a eukaryotic cell. Take
171
L. Pismen, Active Matter Within and Around Us, The Frontiers Collection,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68421-1_8
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021