Biology of the twinning phenomenon: embryogenesis and teratogenesis.

Abstract

The twinning phenomenon has always interested the great public, the artists, and naturally the scientists. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire has established a classification still now valid. This classification considers the different types of double monsters which are found in nature in all classes of vertebrates, including man. To explain the twinning phenomenon, the experimental realizations have progressed by successive bounds after the preliminary attempts of different authors. Now, when it is question of experimental duplication, anybody thinks of Speman for the amphibians, of Lutz for the birds, of Seidel for the rabbit, and of Tarkowsky for the mouse. Now, it is possible to conceive a twinning resulting from the separation of the first blastomeres (amphibian, rabbit, mouse) and a twinning originating from the fissuration of the blastoderm (bird, mammal). All these experiments confirm the unicist-theory. If a total or partial regulation of the excedents may be experimentally realized, no argument can however support this theory in the realization of the double monstrosity.