Organogenesis in Cephalopoda: further evidence of blastodisc-bound developmental information

The basic mechanisms of organ differentiation in the Cephalopod embryo (telolecithal egg, discoidal cleavage) are studied. The results of ligation experiments, performed in early cleavage stages, confirm earlier conclusions of the author, drawn from transplantation/explantation and heat-shock experiments. The developmental information for cellular differentiation is shown to reside in the blastodisc; the yolk syncytium, in which a large part of the original egg cortex is incorporated, acts as as nutritive substrate for the cellular material involved in organogenesis. On the basis of these results, Arnold's induction model supposing an undisplaceable determining informational pattern laid down in the uncleaved egg cortex must be rejected.