The concept of the morphogenetic field was first introduced in 1910 by
Alexander G. Gurwitsch. Experimental support was provided by
Ross Granville Harrison's experiments transplanting fragments of a newt embryo into different locations. Harrison was able to identify "fields" of cells producing organs such as limbs, tail and gills and to show that these fields could be fragmented or have undifferentiated cells added and a complete normal final structure would still result. It was thus considered that it was the "field" of cells, rather than individual cells, that were patterned for subsequent development of particular organs. The field concept was developed further by Harrison's friend
Hans Spemann, and then by
Paul Weiss and others. In 2005,
Sean B. Carroll and colleagues mention morphogenetic fields merely as a
concept proposed by early embryologists to explain the finding that a forelimb bud could be transplanted and still give rise to a forelimb; they define
field simply as "a discrete region" in an embryo. == References ==