Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase: In Components of the Chick Vertebral Induction System

Within the biological cell, what is embryonic induction?In 1960 I was at the University of Kansas Medical School Anatomy Department with Chairman Dr. Paul Roofe. The department specialized in NEUROANATOMY. All department members' research interests and teaching expertise were neuroanatomic.The advisor that was the best fit for me, as I would learn later, was Dr. Byron S Wenger as he was set up with a complete Lowry ultramicrohistochemical Laboratory modified for the procedures to specifically analyze components of embryonic development of the chick nervous system. I submitted a proposal to analyze the spinal cord and its role in the development of the axial vertebrae. It would be a study initially referred to as EMBRYONIC INDUCTION of the VERTEBRA. Dr. Wenger had been in the laboratories of Dr. Victor Hamburger and Oliver H. Lowry so I started with Hamburger-Hamilton Stage 17 assaying glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), the first enzyme in the Pentose Phosphate Metabolic Pathway. Lowry has maintained that "if an enzyme is there, it has a purpose in proportion to its activity." I have reviewed another important function of an enzyme, which is energy transfer from substrate to product, at which time one molecule becomes another with the help of a cofactor. Is EMBRYONIC INDUCTION the unfolding of the genetic code using these energy transfer principles, and shouldn't we be looking here to explain EMBRYONIC INDUCTION?