100 years of Growth and Form!

This year marks the 100th anniversary of "On Growth and Form" [1] by the biologist/ mathematician D'arcy Thompson. "On Growth and Form" has always been an intriguing book from both a historical and technical perspective [2]. This includes the integration of fields such as physics, developmental biology, and geometry. There is an entire website dedicated to the centennial, which demonstrates that his ideas are still useful today [3].

Four bony fish phenotypes related through evolution and transformed through phenotypic deformation. 

D'arcy Thompson provided an account of what we now call evo-devo [4] as a series of mathematical transformations. On the one hand, this provides a mathematical model for the static geometry of the developmental phenotype across species. On the other hand, Thompson provided few if any evolutionary, nor any genetic mechanisms, even in a time when both were becoming ascendant [5]. His physical approach to biological form and morphogenesis has not only been useful in biology, but also as inspiration for computational modeling approaches [6].

NOTES:
[1] Thompson, D.W. (1917). On Growth and Form. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.

[2] Alicea, B. (2011). The Growth and Form of Pasta. Synthetic Daisies blog, October 11.

[3] Much of the contemporary innovation in this area is in the field of architecture. In modern evo-devo, it has taken a back seat to genetic manipulation. Given what we now know about evolution and genetics, there are some potentially interesting biological simulation to be done at the interface of regulatory mechanisms in development and phenotypic fitness based on biomechanical parameters.

[4] Arthur, W. (2006). D'Arcy Thompson and the theory of transformations. Nature Reviews Genetics, 7, 401-406.

[5] Deichmann, U. (2011). Early 20th-century research at the interfaces of genetics, development, and evolution: reflections on progress and dead ends. Developmental Biology, 357(1), 3-12.

[6] Kumar, S. and Bentley, P.J. (2003). On Growth, Form, and Computers. Elsevier, Amsterdam.