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Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally, "beginning of the shape") is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of developmental biology along with the control of cell growth and cellular differentiation.〔Slack, J.M.W. (2013) Essential Developmental Biology. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.〕〔Bard, J.B.L. (1990) Morphogenesis. The Cellular and Molecular Processes of Developmental Anatomy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK. 〕 The process controls the organized spatial distribution of cells during the embryonic development of an organism. Morphogenesis can take place also in a mature organism, in cell culture or inside tumor cell masses. Morphogenesis also describes the development of unicellular life forms that do not have an embryonic stage in their life cycle, or describes the evolution of a body structure within a taxonomic group. Morphogenetic responses may be induced in organisms by hormones, by environmental chemicals ranging from substances produced by other organisms to toxic chemicals or radionuclides released as pollutants, and other plants, or by mechanical stresses induced by spatial patterning of the cells. ==History== Some of the earliest ideas and mathematical descriptions on how physical processes and constraints affect biological growth, and hence natural patterns such as the spirals of phyllotaxis, were written by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson in his 1917 book ''On Growth and Form'' and Alan Turing in his ''The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis'' (1952). Where Thompson explained animal body shapes as being created by varying rates of growth in different directions, for instance to create the spiral shell of a snail, Turing correctly predicted the diffusion of two different chemical signals, one activating and one deactivating growth, to set up patterns of development. The fuller understanding of the mechanisms involved in actual organisms required the discovery of DNA and the development of molecular biology and biochemistry. The term histomorphogenesis was coined by Ricqlès et al. (2001) for the same process in bone histology. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「morphogenesis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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