Cell Determination during Early Embryogenesis of the Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans
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Excerpt
Investigations in many different organisms indicate that early embryonic development is controlled essentially by maternal gene products, which are deposited in the unfertilized egg (cf. Davidson 1976). Nevertheless, how a specific developmental pathway for a cell is determined, including eventual functional differentiation, as well as decisions such as the number of progeny a cell will produce and its final position in the organism remain open questions.
Some cases in which determination of cell fate is obviously mediated by differential segregation of cytoplasmic components have been reported for somatic (van Dam et al. 1982; Whittaker 1982) and germ line cells (Illmensee and Mahowald 1974; Wakahara 1978). On the other hand, models for the asymmetric segregation of developmental potential via chromosome lineage have been discussed (Cairns 1975).
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a suitable organism for studying the question of cell determination during development. On the basis of classical studies (e.g., Boveri...
