Sunday, May 20, 2012

Animal Development

Starfish
Sea Sponges don't really have any organs. If you blenderise a Sea Sponge and wait till the next day you will find the live cells found each other and start to form into a new Sea Sponge. Lot's of animals are much more complex then sea sponges Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and "morphogenesis", which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy. The development of a new life is a spectacular process and represents a masterpiece of temporal and spatial control of gene expression. Developmental genetics studies the effect that genes have in a phenotype, given normal or abnormal epigenetic parameters. The findings of developmental biology can help to understand developmental abnormalities such as chromosomal aberrations that cause Down syndrome. An understanding of the specialization of cells during embryogenesis has provided information on how stem cells specialize into specific tissues and organs. Animal complexity has everything to do with what happens with the first couple of hours it spends during its development. Growth is the enlargement of a tissue or organism. Growth continues after the embryonal stage, and occurs through cell proliferation, enlargement of cells or accumulation of extracellular material. In plants, growth results in an adult organism that is strikingly different from the embryo. The proliferating cells tend to be distinct from differentiated cells (see stem cell and progenitor cell). In some tissues proliferating cells are restricted to specialised areas, such as the growth plates of bones. But some stem cells migrate to where they are needed, such as mesenchymal stem cells which can migrate from the bone marrow to form e.g. muscle, bone or adipose tissue. The size of an organ frequently determines its growth, as in the case of the liver which grows back to its previous size if a part is removed. Growth factors, such as fibroblast growth factors in the animal embryo and growth hormone in juvenile mammals, also control the extent of growth. A Sea Sponge doesn't have a mouth or an anus, ha ha ha laugh all you want. The more complex the animal is, the more it resembles a tube. Most animals have a larval stage, with a body plan different from that of the adult organism. The larva abrubtly develops into an adult in a process called metamorphosis. For example, caterpillars (butterfly larvae) are specialized for feeding whereas adult butterflies (imagos) are specialised for flight and reproduction. When the caterpillar has grown enough, it turns into an immobile pupa. Here, the imago develops from imaginal discs found inside the larva. Another biologically important process that occurs during development is apoptosis—programmed cell death or "suicide." Many developmental models are used to elucidate the physiology and molecular basis of this cellular process. Similarly, a deeper understanding of developmental biology can foster greater progress in the treatment of congenital disorders and diseases, e.g. studying human sex determination can lead to treatment for disorders such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Sperm cells and egg cells are gametes. Morula is Latin for raspberry. Are ancestors were just a butt-hole attached to a couple of cells, like a Starfish. Aren't you glad that we are not Deuterostomes. In both deuterostomes and protostomes, a zygote first develops into a hollow ball of cells, called a blastula. In deuterostomes, the early divisions occur parallel or perpendicular to the polar axis. This is called radial cleavage, and also occurs in certain protostomes, such as the lophophorates. Most deuterostomes display indeterminate cleavage, in which the developmental fate of the cells in the developing embryo are not determined by the identity of the parent cell. Thus if the first four cells are separated, each cell is capable of forming a complete small larva, and if a cell is removed from the blastula the other cells will compensate. In biology, a phylum is a taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class. "Phylum" is equivalent to the botanical term division. The kingdom Animalia contains approximately 35 phyla; the kingdom Plantae contains 12 divisions. Current research in phylogenetics is uncovering the relationships between phyla, which are contained in larger clades, like Ecdysozoa and Embryophyta. The Sea Sponge is the most non complicated thing ever. Because it's only a tube with a hole on the top. Informally, phyla can be thought of as grouping organisms based on general specialization of body plan, at the most basic level, a phylum can be defined in two ways: as a group of organisms with a certain degree of morphological or developmental similarity (the phenetic definition), or a group of organisms with a certain degree of evolutionary relatedness (the phylogenetic definition).






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