Abstract
THE development of biology into an experimental science is nowhere better illustrated than in the important researches on artificial parthenogenesis which we owe largely to Jacques Loeb, and biologists will welcome heartily the little book in which this distinguished author gives an account of the subject. Prof. Loeb informs us that the object of his investigations was to transfer the problem of the fertilisation (Entwicklungserregung) of the animal egg from the domain of morphology to that of physical chemistry. He recalls the fact that it is only about sixty years since it was first firmly established that the animal earg-with the exception of a few cases-can only develop into an embryo after fertilisation by the entrance of a spermatozoon. Various interpretations have been placed upon this process. O. Hertwig maintained that the essential feature of fertilisation was the union of the male and female pronuclei in the egg-cell, and the observation of this union was undoubtedly of the greatest importance, especially from the point of view of the theory of heredity, but it gave us no real insight into the nature of the stimulus which evokes as its response the segmentation of the egg. Boveri, indeed, maintained that the union of the two pronuclei had nothing to do with providing this stimulus, and was able to show that an enucleated egg may develop after fertilisation by a spermatozoon. According to Boveri the centrosome is the organ of cell-division, and the unfertilised egg cannot develop because the centrosome is wanting. A new centrosome is introduced by the spermatozoon, and then cell-division or segmentation commences.
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References
"Die chemische Entwicklungserregung des tierischen Eies (Künstliche Parthenogenese)". By Jacques Loeb . (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1909.> Price 9 marks.
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Artificial Parthenogenesis. Nature 81, 459 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081459a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081459a0