These methods complement the experimental approaches of developmental biology and genetics, and can be expected to be especially fruitful in combination with them.
They combined conventional approaches of developmental biology, including analysis and manipulation of gene expression and live time lapse microscopy of cell movements in the developing chick embryo, with engineering methods, such as mathematical modeling and force and strain measurements.
Studies combining concepts and approaches of developmental genetics and evolutionary biology have uncovered many examples of the recruitment, or co-option, of genes conserved across lineages for the formation of novel, lineage-restricted traits.
The hESC-derived cardiomyocytes generated contractile forces characteristic of fetal cardiomyocytes, illustrating the utility of the approach for developmental and physiological studies and providing further validation that the cardiomyocytes produced by drug selection from the engineered hESCs were normal by multiple physiological criteria.
Each of these individual parts is interesting but they are not fully developed and I do not feel that they add up to a discussion of the value of a practical approach to developmental biology, nor do they currently address the question that the author poses.
It is noted that this model follows the neuropsychological approach to the study of developmental disorders, an approach that has been recently criticized.
These findings are discussed within the perspective of the development of innovative alternative approaches to developmental hazard assessment.
The Lamarckian approach emphasizes the generation of developmental variations; Darwinism stresses selection.
Recent large-scale mutagenesis screens have made the zebrafish the first vertebrate organism to allow a forward genetic approach to the discovery of developmental control genes.
In addition, the attempts at definitions vary, depending on the theoretical approach: In the context of developmental psychological theories, for example, emphasis is placed on adjusting social competences to social standards and rules, while the assertion of one's own interests is more strongly stressed within the framework of clinical psychological approaches (Kanning 2005).
