Spatio-temporal coordination of cellular energetics and metabolism during development

Abstract

Chapter 4 approached, from the angle of dynamic organization, the question of how millions of molecules could be spatio–temporally organized in morphogenetic fields such that form arises in developing organisms at macroscopic scales (micrometres to millimetres, i.e. the characteristic lengths over which biological form is generated). Indeed, molecules caught in the spatio-temporal window of milliseconds and nanometres are not able to create anistropy per se at spatial dimensions of micrometres to millimetres and minutes to hours. Even though the maternal environment is asymmetrical, it is the internal (e.g. egg’s) process dynamics that, within appropriate boundaries, will distribute molecular components anisotropically. We hypothesize that only the dynamics of processes, i.e. fluxes or movements of molecular, supramolecular or subcellular structures, and not molecules themselves are able to create spatial anisotropy in a long-range scale such as that needed for developmental polarity (section 4.14).