Devolution (biology)

Degeneration (Latin de - "corresponds "; genus " type, gender " ) is a common in medical science term for formal, structural and functional deviations from the norm. The term is most often used in the sense of functional impairment (e.g., degenerative change of the tendon ). In order to delineate the history of medicine, see degeneration.

In today's medical parlance is meant by degeneration of the regression and the decline mainly of whole tissues or organs:

• Degradation or loss of function due to the plant or due to chronic injury factors ( " degenerative diseases " ) or insufficient use ( see also atrophy and dystrophy )
• A regression no longer used body parts in the course of evolution or the individual maturation (more precisely referred to as involution ).

Distinction between

If individual cells affected, it is called more of necrosis ( pathological ) or different types programmed cell death ( physiological).

When relapse into " primitive " behavior pattern to use regression, a psychoanalytically colored concept. The opposite of the bio- pathological degeneration is the differentiation or Gewebsreifung. A mutation may cause degeneration, but merely means judgmental "change".

In Genetics of the degeneracy of the genetic code, describes the variety of base triplets, which encode an amino acid.