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Updated: Jul 25, 2026

Tracking Morphogenetic Tissue Deformations in the Early Chick Embryo
Published on: October 17, 2011
Two ways for interpreting Driesch's law: "Positional information" and morphogenetic fields
Lev V Beloussov1, Richard Gordon2
1Laboratory of Developmental Biophysics, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia.
Abstract:
The late Lev V. Beloussov wrote a 2005 textbook The Foundations of General Embryology which is available in Russian. In 2003 he prepared an excellent, annotated translation of the part of his manuscript for this book on distinguishing positional information models from morphogenetic field models of embryogenesis, which is reproduced here verbatim. He concluded: "…the PI [positional information] concept has no predictive value, and cannot be thus regarded as a scientific theory".
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