How functional organisms arise from a single cell is a fundamental question in biology with direct relevance to understanding developmental defects and diseases. Dissecting developmental processes provides the basic, critical framework for understanding disease progression and treatment. Bottom-up approaches to recapitulate formation of various components of the embryo have been effective to probe symmetry-breaking, self-organisation, tissue patterning and morphogenesis. However, these studies have been mostly concerned with axial patterning, which is essentially longitudinal. Can these models generate the appendicular axes? If so, how far can self-organisation take these? Will experimentally induced organisers be required? This short review explores these questions, highlighting how minimal models are essential for understanding patterning and morphogenetic processes.

功能生物体如何从单个细胞产生是生物学中的一个基本问题，与理解发育缺陷和疾病直接相关。剖析发育过程为理解疾病进展和治疗提供了基本、关键的框架。自下而上的方法来概括胚胎各个组成部分的形成，已有效地探索对称性破缺、自组织、组织模式和形态发生。然而，这些研究主要关注轴向图案，本质上是纵向的。这些模型可以生成附肢轴吗？如果是这样，自组织能走多远？是否需要实验诱导的组织者？这篇简短的评论探讨了这些问题，强调了最小模型对于理解模式和形态发生过程的重要性。