Abstract

An early embryo becomes a blastula at the moment that its constituent cells become organised into a simple epithelium. Epithelial folding and compartmentation are essential elements of animal development. All the different cell types ‐ epithelial and other ones ‐ of which a differentiated organism consists differ in their plasmamembrane‐cytoskeletal complex but they are assumed to have an identical genome. The hypothesis is put forward that, perhaps, the basic mechanism underlying differentiation can be defined as the generation of cells which have an identical genome but which differ in their plasmamembrane‐cytoskeletal complex and which, because of these differences, can engage in differential protein synthesis‐physiology.