✽ Development

☞ Growth (↑ in mass of tissues)

☞ Differentiation (↑ in complexity)
✽ Development does not stop at birth
☞ Development of teeth, breast…
☞ Brain triples in weigth between birth & 16 yrs
☞ Most development completed by the age of 25
✽ Divided into:
☞ Prenatal period (embryonic period: 3rd – 8th week)
☞ Postnatal period ✹ Infancy (neotate – 1st yr)
✹ childhood (13 mo – 12 yrs)
✹ puberty (12 – 15 ♀ , 13 – 16 ♂ yrs)
✹ adolescence (12 – 17 yrs)
✹ adulthood (18 – 21 yrs)

PURPOSE OF LEARNING EMBRYOLOGY.

BASIC FACTS OF EARLY HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
☞ Literally means “study of embryos”, 3rd – 8th week
☞ Generally refers to “prenatal development”:
both embryos and fetuses.
☞ Developmental anatomy: prenatal and postnatal
periods.
☞ Teratology: study of abnormal development
(Birth defects, congenital malformations)

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
CONCEPTUS, EMBRYO, FETUS
☞ Normal development vs. birth defects
☞ Illuminates gross anatomy: normal / abnormal
☞ Obstetrics: applied embryology: mother vs
embryo/fetus
☞ Pediatrics → congenital anomalies: spina
bifida, congenital heart diseases
☞ Surgery → cleft palate, cardiac defects
1. Preformation: 18th century.
➝ Development is merely the growth of an
already present diminutive being.
2. Epigenesis: (Caspar Friedrich Wolff, 1759)
➝Development results from growth & differentiation
of specialized cells.
3. Recapitulation (Carl Ernst von Baer, 1928):
Biogenetic Law
➝ Early stages in devpt are not like the adult stages.
4. Induction (Hans Spemann, 1869-1941): Nobel Prize 1935.
➝ Inducer, e.g. optic vesicle → lens
(one tissue determines the fate of another)
➝ Organizer
➝ Homeoboxes (DNA sequences, encoding AA)
5. Germ layers
➝ Morphogenetic processes - cavitation
- invagination
- migration
- proliferation
➝ Primordium (anlage) – earliest discernible indication
of an organ or a part of it.
6. Epithelio - mesenchymal interactions
➝ skin, hair, nails: Mesenchyme induces & specifies an
epithelium.
7. Morphogenetic fields: organizing factors
➝ determination: ectoderm → neural tissue
8. Morphogenetic processes
➝ rearrangement of cells - Relative cell movement
- Cell adhesiveness
- Invagination
- Condensation
- Fusion
- Cell death
- Proliferation
- Differential growth rates
9. Cell death (necrosis): genetic control
➝ Interdigital cell death
➝ Establishment of definite number of neurons
✹ ↓ cell volume
✹ chromatin condensation
✹ cell dies
✹ apoptosis
✹ autophagy (with / without
lysosomal participation)
✹ swelling of a cell & cellular
membrane ruptures

10. Mechanical factors

Figure 1 : The dwarf embryo as imagined by Leonardo da
Vinci from the 15th century (on the left)
 Turner's syndrome

Figure 7 : Teratoma in the coccygeal region at the end of the

spine
Trisomy 18: flecked, crossed-over fingers; deformed feet
Trisomy 13: Cleft palate, lip
and jaw
Trisomy 18: Dolichocephaly
Turner's syndrome