Gradient expectations: Revisiting Charles Manning Child's theory of metabolic regionalisation in developmental patterning and regeneration

Abstract Charles Manning Child introduced one of several early models to explain how an organism can both establish and re‐establish positional identity during embryogenesis and regeneration. In his gradient theory model, tissues along an axis exhibit graded levels of metabolic activity demonstrated through their differential susceptibility to metabolic inhibitors. While Child's work was difficult to place in a mechanistic framework in his own time, technological advances and recent discoveries in both embryos and regenerating organisms make his early work on redox signalling as a positional cue newly pertinent.