SUMMARY
To transform a single-celled zygote into an adult multicellular organism, development employs three basic processes — asymmetric cell division, signaling and gene regulation. These three processes can be combined in a multitude of ways, thus generating the huge diversity of plant and animal forms we see today. The wealth of possible developmental schemes created by this combinatorial explosion is hard to survey and understand. Here, with a generative Boolean model, we demonstrate and systematically chart the extent of diversity that development can potentially produce. Our results indicate that, in contrast to common views, cell-type lineage graphs are unlikely to be tree-like. Additionally, in line with the hypothesis that whole body regeneration is an epiphenomenon of development, a majority of the organisms generated by our model can regenerate using pluripotent cells.