Dear FISers,
Going to the extreme, I think this year opening lecture can be
summarized in three contentious points.
1. That life's physiology is based on the conjunction of a few
principles: neguentropy, chemiosmosis, and homeostasis-homeorhesis.
2. That communication (cell signaling) is an essential factor in the
multicellular evolution towards complexity.
3. That epigenetic inheritance and the obligate recursion to the
unicellular state become the basis of a new evolutionary theory.
I disagree with point 1, as I think some nonliving states could also be
characterized by those principles (eg, chemical cycles/hypercycles in
marine vents, and other outcomes derived from "energy flows"); besides,
some previous "info stuff" has to be in place. Then I completely agree
with point 2, for signaling is not just another characteristic of the
cell, it is "the" eukaryotic trait par excellence. And I am curious on
how point 3 could be further substantiated... In this respect I
recommend the two papers that Bill sent to the list a few weeks ago. Do
we need to postulate the emergence of a form of "self-referential
cognition" right at the beginning?
Perhaps!
All the best--Pedro
El 09/01/2018 a las 19:05, Bill escribió:
Dear Pedro and Colleagues,
I have been following the thread of comments with great interest, all
of which have all been occasioned by John Torday's profound insights
about the nature of evolutionary development in light of the
importance of cell-cell signaling and molecular biology. From the
comments, it is clear that there is a strong impulse to seek a means
of integrating the role of symbiogenesis, viruses and mobile elements,
multilevel selection, niche construction, genomic plasticity into a
common narrative with an informational perspective at its foundation.
In the spirit of that line of discussion, I am offering two links
that discuss evolution as an biologic information management system.
Some of this work shares direct commonality with John's, since he and
I are frequent collaborators.
http://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/5/2/21/htm
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071730233X
Both of these articles can be considered as complementary to Pedro's
very fine article, 'How prokaryotes ‘encode’ their environment:
Systemic tools for organizing the information flow', which is in
BioSystems.
I am grateful to John for inviting me to participate in the forum and
to Pedro for encouraging me to share these manuscripts.
Best regards,
Bill
William B. Miller, Jr., M.D.
602-463-5236
wbmill...@cox.net
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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