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Summary

Developmental Biology is the study of organisms’ life cycles from single cell to complex reproducing and aging multi-cellular organisms. It endeavours to explain phenomena such as: cellular differentiation (e.g. neurons vs. liver cells) and cellular aging, the development of gross morphology and anatomical structures (e.g. body shape and organs -eyes and limbs-), and the development of an organism as an integrated part of an eco-system (e.g. phenotypic plasticity). The philosophically relevant points, in addition to broader philosophy of science inquiries (e.g. confirmation and explanation) are those that have to do with the ontological status of biological kinds and with inter-level relations, specifically the integration of developmental biology with evolutionary biology and to a lesser extent, with ecology. Keeping this is in mind the subcategories within Developmental Biology can be grouped into three main themes: Evolution, Ecology and Ontology.    

Evolution

(Evolutionary-Developmental Biology, Developmental Constraints and Process Structuralism)

Ecology 

(Ecological Developmental Biology, Epigenetic Inheritance, Nature vs. Nurture and Innateness) 

and 

Ontology 

(Developmental Modularity, Developmental System Theory and Process Structuralism).

Key works Key works will be arranged by sub-category and cited there.
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  1. The reduction of classical experimental embryology to molecular developmental biology : a tale of three sciences.Marcel Weber - 2023 - In William C. Bausman, Janella K. Baxter & Oliver M. Lean (eds.), From biological practice to scientific metaphysics. University of Minnesota Press.
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  2. There Are No Intermediate Stages: An Organizational View on Development.Leonardo Bich & Derek Skillings - 2023 - In Matteo Mossio (ed.), Organization in Biology. Springer. pp. 241-262.
    Theoretical accounts of development exhibit several internal tensions and face multiple challenges. They span from the problem of the identification of the temporal boundaries of development (beginning and end) to the characterization of the distinctive type of change involved compared to other biological processes. They include questions such as the role to ascribe to the environment or what types of biological systems can undergo development and whether they should include colonies or even ecosystems. In this chapter we discuss these conceptual (...)
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  3. A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Idealisations and the aims of polygenic scores.Davide Serpico - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 102 (C):72-83.
    Research in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine has recently introduced the concept of Polygenic Scores (PGSs), namely, indexes that aggregate the effects that many genetic variants are predicted to have on individual disease risk. The popularity of PGSs is increasing rapidly, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the idealisations they make about phenotypic development. Indeed, PGSs rely on quantitative genetics models and methods, which involve considerable theoretical assumptions that have been questioned on various grounds. This comes with epistemological and (...)
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  4. 1 Genome Analysis and Developmental Biology: The Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a Model System.Thomas R. Bürglin - 2020 - In Eva M. Neumann-Held, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Barbara Herrnstein Smith & E. Roy Weintraub (eds.), Genes in Development: Re-reading the Molecular Paradigm. Duke University Press. pp. 15-37.
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  5. Joint representation: Modeling a phenomenon with multiple biological systems.Yoshinari Yoshida - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 99:67-76.
    Biologists often study particular biological systems as models of a phenomenon of interest even if they already know that the phenomenon is produced by diverse mechanisms and hence none of those systems alone can sufficiently represent it. To understand this modeling practice, the present paper provides an account of how multiple model systems can be used to study a phenomenon that is produced by diverse mechanisms. Even if generalizability of results from a single model system is significantly limited, generalizations concerning (...)
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  6. Crossing the Threshold: An Epigenetic Alternative to Dimensional Accounts of Mental Disorders.Davide Serpico & Valentina Petrolini - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Recent trends in psychiatry involve a transition from categorical to dimensional frameworks, in which the boundary between health and pathology is understood as a difference in degree rather than as a difference in kind. A major tenet of dimensional approaches is that no qualitative distinction can be made between health and pathology. As a consequence, these approaches tend to characterize such a threshold as pragmatic or conventional in nature. However, dimensional approaches to psychopathology raise several epistemological and ontological issues. First, (...)
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  7. Darwinian and Autopoietic Views of the Organism.Walter Veit & Heather Browning - 2022 - Constructivist Foundations 18 (1):103–105.
    Our goal is to illustrate that Darwinian and autopoietic views of the organism are not as squarely opposed to each other as is often assumed. Indeed, we will argue that there is much common ground between them and that they can usefully supplement each other.
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  8. Darwinian and Autopoietic Views of the Organism.Walter Veit & Heather Browning - 2022 - Constructivist Foundations 18 (1):103–105.
    Our goal is to illustrate that Darwinian and autopoietic views of the organism are not as squarely opposed to each other as is often assumed. Indeed, we will argue that there is much common ground between them and that they can usefully supplement each other.
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  9. Developmental biology.Alan Love - 2020 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Developmental biology is the science that investigates how a variety of interacting processes generate an organism’s heterogeneous shapes, size, and structural features that arise on the trajectory from embryo to adult, or more generally throughout a life cycle. It represents an exemplary area of contemporary experimental biology that focuses on phenomena that have puzzled natural philosophers and scientists for more than two millennia. Philosophers of biology have shown interest in developmental biology due to the potential relevance of development for understanding (...)
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  10. Situating evolutionary developmental biology in evolutionary theory.Alan Love - 2020 - In S. M. Scheiner and D. P. Mindell (ed.), The Theory of Evolution: Principles, Concepts, and Assumptions. Chicago, IL, USA: pp. 144-169.
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  11. John Tyler Bonner: Remembering a scientific pioneer.Ingo Brigandt, L. A. Katz, V. Nanjundiah, S. F. Gilbert, P. R. Grant, B. R. Grant, Alan Love, S. A. Newman & M. J. West-Eberhard - 2019 - Journal of Experimental Evolution (Mol Dev Evol) 332:365-370.
    Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent researchers on the greatness of John Bonner and the implications of his work.
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  12. Evolutionizing human nature.John Klasios - 2016 - New Ideas in Psychology 40.
    Many have argued that the very notion of human nature is untenable given the facts of evolution and should accordingly be discarded. This paper, by contrast, argues that the notion can be retained in a coherent and modern way. The present account expounds on the view of human nature as a collection of species-typical psychological adaptations, and outlines how it can be understood in formally modeled computational terms. The view defended is also heavily developmental and connects directly with contemporary evolutionary (...)
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  13. Transgenerational trauma and worlded brains: an interdisciplinary perspective on ‘post-traumatic slave syndrome’.Machiel Keestra - 2023 - In Stephan Besser & Flora Lysen (eds.), Worlding the Brain. Neurocentrism, Cognition and the Challenge of the Arts and Humanities. Leiden, Nederland: Brill. pp. 63-81.
    Trauma and traumatization have arguably always been part of the human experience yet have in the last few decades come to occupy a prominent place in various popular and academic contexts. This chapter offers an interdisciplinary and comparative investigation of trauma and traumatization in different historical contexts. More specifically, my aim is to discuss whether the rich bodies of research in trauma and traumatization in Holocaust survivors and their descendants yield relevant insights for post-slavery contexts. It has been shown that (...)
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  14. Michelini, F. y Köchy, K. (eds.). (2020). Jakob von Uexküll and Philosophy. Life, Environments, Anthropology. Routledge. 284 pp. [REVIEW]Maximiliano S. Beckel - 2021 - Tópicos: Revista de Filosofía 62:485–490.
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  15. The Reduction of Classical Experimental Embryology to Molecular Developmental Biology: A Tale of Three Sciences.Marcel Weber - 2023 - In William Bausman, Janella Baxter & Oliver Lean (eds.), From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics. Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
    I attempt to characterize the relationship of classical experimental embryology (CEE) and molecular developmental biology and compare it to the much-discussed case of classical genetics. These sciences are treated here as discovery practices rather than as definitive forms of knowledge. I first show that CEE had some causal knowledge and hence was able to answer specific why?-questions. A paradigm was provided by the case of eye induction, perhaps CEE’s greatest success. The case of the famous Spemann-Mangold organizer is more difficult. (...)
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  16. Linking Mitochondria and Synaptic Transmission: The CB1 Receptor.Marie-Ange Djeungoue-Petga & Etienne Hebert-Chatelain - 2017 - Bioessays 39 (12):1700126.
    CB1 receptors are functionally present within brain mitochondria, although they are usually considered specifically targeted to plasma membrane. Acute activation of mtCB1 alters mitochondrial ATP generation, synaptic transmission, and memory performance. However, the detailed mechanism linking disrupted mitochondrial metabolism and synaptic transmission is still uncharacterized. CB1 receptors are among the most abundant G protein-coupled receptors in the brain and impact on several processes, including fear coping, anxiety, stress, learning, and memory. Mitochondria perform several key physiological processes for neuronal homeostasis, including (...)
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  17. Physical Limits on the Precision of Mitotic Spindle Positioning by Microtubule Pushing forces.Jonathon Howard & Carlos Garzon-Coral - 2017 - Bioessays 39 (11):1700122.
    Tissues are shaped and patterned by mechanical and chemical processes. A key mechanical process is the positioning of the mitotic spindle, which determines the size and location of the daughter cells within the tissue. Recent force and position-fluctuation measurements indicate that pushing forces, mediated by the polymerization of astral microtubules against­ the cell cortex, maintain the mitotic spindle at the cell center in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. The magnitude of the centering forces suggests that the physical limit on the accuracy and (...)
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  18. Turing’s Biological Philosophy: Morphogenesis, Mechanisms and Organicism.Hajo Greif, Adam Kubiak & Paweł Stacewicz - 2023 - Philosophies 8 (1):8.
    Alan M. Turing’s last published work and some posthumously published manuscripts were dedicated to the development of his theory of organic pattern formation. In “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” (1952), he provided an elaborated mathematical formulation of the theory of the origins of biological form that had been first proposed by Sir D’Arcy Wendworth Thompson in On Growth and Form (1917/1942). While arguably his most mathematically detailed and his systematically most ambitious effort, Turing’s morphogenetical writings also form the most thematically (...)
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  19. Counting with Cilia: The Role of Morphological Computation in Basal Cognition Research.Wiktor Rorot - 2022 - Entropy 24 (11):1581.
    “Morphological computation” is an increasingly important concept in robotics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of the mind. It is used to understand how the body contributes to cognition and control of behavior. Its understanding in terms of "offloading" computation from the brain to the body has been criticized as misleading, and it has been suggested that the use of the concept conflates three classes of distinct processes. In fact, these criticisms implicitly hang on accepting a semantic definition of what constitutes computation. (...)
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  20. Mindsponge Theory.Quan-Hoang Vuong - 2023 - Warsaw, Poland: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
    As humans, we use the power of thinking to make scientific discoveries, develop technologies, manage social interactions, and transmit knowledge to the next generations. With the ability to think, we can trace back and discover the origin of the universe, the natural world, and ourselves. The content of this book, Mindsponge Theory, is part of that discovery process. -/- Product Details -/- Publisher ‏ : ‎ Walter de Gruyter (December 6, 2022) Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 6, 2022 Language (...)
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  21. Dissolving Nature/Nurture: Development as Coupled Interaction.Derek E. Oswick - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Western Ontario
    For many, the Nature/Nurture approach to development is a quaint figment of the past. We have moved on, one might think; everyone thinks that both categories are important for development, not merely one. The reality, however, is not so simple. In this dissertation, I argue that contemporary biology has not succeeded in getting out from under the shadow of Nature/Nurture, despite everyone being some sort of interactionist about development. The central aim of my project is to offer a form of (...)
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  22. A trans-disciplinary book on the maternal body and infant health: Sarah S. Richardson: The maternal imprint: the contested science of maternal–fetal effects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021, 376 pp, $95.00 HB. [REVIEW]Skye A. Miner - 2022 - Metascience 31 (2):215-217.
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  23. Biological Information: New Perspectives.Bruce Gordon - 2013 - Singapore: World Scientific.
    Based on a conference on the nature and origin of biological information held at Cornell University in 2011, this edited volume presents new research by experts in information theory, computer science, numerical simulation, thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, whole organism biology, developmental biology, molecular biology, genetics, physics, biophysics, mathematics, and linguistics.
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  24. Scientific Humility: Scientific Honesty – Hypothesis and Science.Bhakti Madhava Puri - 2009 - Darwin Under Siege.
    It is not that scientists make an hypothesis first, and then try to find the data to fit that hypothesis. Rather, the process is first observation, then an hypothes is made to describe the data, then conclude that the data has been described by the hypothesis. But this is not an explanation of the phenomenon. It is merely a description of the data in different terms, usually mathematics. It is essentially a tautology. Thus to observe various points and connect them (...)
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  25. The Logic of Life.Bhakti Madhava Puri - 2008 - Science and Scientist.
    Modern science generally assumes that the same laws of logic apply to mechanical, chemical and biological entities alike because they are all ultimately material objects. This may seem to be so obvious that there would be no need to validate it -- experimentally or logically. In this article we would like to critically examine this assumption and show that from an experiential/observational level, as well as from a rational/logical level, it is not valid. This becomes apparent, for instance, when we (...)
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  26. From Obesity to Energy Metabolism: Ontological Perspectives on the Metrics of Human Bodies.Davide Serpico & Andrea Borghini - 2020 - Topoi 40 (3):577-586.
    In this paper, we aim at rethinking the concept of obesity in a way that better captures the connection between underlying medical aspects, on the one hand, and an individual’s developmental history, on the other. Our proposal rests on the idea that obesity is not to be understood as a phenotypic trait or character; rather, obesity represents one of the many possible states of a more complex phenotypic trait that we call ‘energy metabolism.’ We argue that this apparently simple conceptual (...)
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  27. La guerra de la Naturaleza, la carestía y la muerte como fuente del diseño de los seres vivos.Giorgio Airoldi & Cristian Saborido - 2020 - Endoxa 46:123.
    El proyecto del ‘Darwinismo Formal’ de Alan Grafen propone una formulación matemática de la teoría de Darwin que pretende demostrar que la selección natural moldea los rasgos fenotípicos a través de la maximización de la eficacia. El proyecto de Grafen reposa sobre tres premisas: la selección natural es la única fuerza que moldea los fenotipos; la eficacia es la única medida de le evolución; y el diseño biológico surge como resultado de un proceso de optimización selectiva. En este trabajo argumentamos (...)
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  28. Het laatste woord is niet gezegd: de moderne synthese voorbij.Nathalie Gontier - 2005 - In I. Tallon (ed.), Evolutie vandaag: hoe de dingen ontstaan en waarom ze veranderen. pp. 57-84.
  29. Evolutionary epistemology and the origin and evolution of language: taking symbiogenesis seriously.Nathalie Gontier - 2006 - In Nathalie Gontier, Jean Paul Van Bendegem & Diederik Aerts (eds.), Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist Systems Theoretical Approach. pp. 195-226.
  30. Introduction to evolutionary epistemology, language and culture.Nathalie Gontier - 2006 - In Nathalie Gontier, Jean Paul Van Bendegem & Diederik Aerts (eds.), Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist Systems Theoretical Approach. pp. 1-29.
  31. Studying Language Evolution: From Ethology and Comparative Zoology to Social Primatology and Evolutionary Psychology.Nathalie Gontier & Marco Pina - 2014 - In Marco Pina & Nathalie Gontier (eds.), The Evolution of Social Communication in Primates: A Multidisciplinary Approach. pp. 1-30.
  32. Genes, Brains, and Language: Would Someone Please Pull the Brakes?Nathalie Gontier - 2008 - Review of General Psychology 2 (12):170-180.
  33. Michael Tomasello, Becoming human: a theory of ontogeny, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019, xi + 379 pp, $35.00/£28.95/€31.50. [REVIEW]Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (4):1-5.
    In this book, Michael Tomasello proposes an overarching theoretical framework that organizes the research that he and his colleagues at the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig have carried out for the past 20 years. The book is recommended for students and academics working on the evolution of human cognition, especially those interested in the intersection between evolutionary developmental biology and developmental psychology.
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  34. Life, Local Constraints and Meaning Generation. An Evolutionary Approach to Cognition (2015).Christophe Menant - manuscript
    The relations between life and cogntion have been addressed through different perspectives [Stewart 1996, Boden 2001, Bourgine and Stewart 2004, van Duijn & all 2006, Di Paolo 2009]. We would like here to address that subject by relating life to cognition through a process of meaning generation. Life emerged on earth as a far from thermodynamic equilibrium performance that had to maintain herself. Life is charactertized by a ‘stay alive’ constraint that has to be satisfied (such constraint can be included (...)
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  35. Peer competition and cooperation.Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera - 2018 - In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Basel:
    Peer competition and peer cooperation can be intuitively seen as opposing phenomena. However, depending on multiple factors, they might be complementary. In a population divided into groups, for instance, members of each group may cooperate with their peers in order to compete with neighboring groups. Alternatively, they may compete with their peers as a means of choosing the best cooperative partners and demonstrate that they are reliable cooperative partners. For instance, if subjects can choose with whom they wish to interact, (...)
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  36. Model Organisms.Rachel Ankeny & Sabina Leonelli - 2020 - Cambridge University Press.
    This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the concept of the 'model organism' in contemporary biology. Thinking about model organisms enables us to examine how living organisms have been brought into the laboratory and used to gain a better understanding of biology, and to explore the research practices, commitments, and norms underlying this understanding. We contend that model organisms are key components of a distinctive way of doing research. We focus on what makes model organisms an important type of model, (...)
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  37. Psychic Unity.Marta Facoetti & Nathalie Gontier - 2020 - Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science.
    Synonyms Cognitive universals; Human nature; Human universals Definition The “psychic unity” idea denotes the existence of a set of psychological and cognitive capacities universally shared by human beings and grounded in biological equality.
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  38. Beyond quantitative and qualitative traits: three telling cases in the life sciences.Davide Serpico - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (3):1-26.
    This paper challenges the common assumption that some phenotypic traits are quantitative while others are qualitative. The distinction between these two kinds of traits is widely influential in biological and biomedical research as well as in scientific education and communication. This is probably due to both historical and epistemological reasons. However, the quantitative/qualitative distinction involves a variety of simplifications on the genetic causes of phenotypic variability and on the development of complex traits. Here, I examine three cases from the life (...)
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  39. Developmental Biology as a Science of Dependent Co-origination.Scott Gilbert - manuscript
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  40. Is the Neo-Aristotelian Concept of Organism Presupposed in Biology?Parisa Moosavi - 2020 - In Martin Hähnel (ed.), Aristotelian Naturalism: A Research Companion. Springer.
    According to neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism, moral goodness is an instance of natural goodness, a kind of normativity supposedly already present in nature in the biological realm of non-human living things. Proponents of this view appeal to Michael Thompson’s conception of a life-form--the form of a living organism--to give an account of natural goodness. However, although neo-Aristotelians call themselves naturalists, they hardly ever consult the science of biology to defend their commitments regarding biological organisms. This has led many critics to argue (...)
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  41. Civilizational structure of regional integration organizations.Sergii Sardak & Y. Prysiazhniuk S. Sardak, S. Radziyevska - 2019 - Przegląd Strategiczny 12:59-79.
    The paper advances a new comprehensive complex approach to the investigation of the civilizational aspects in the development of regional associations of countries. The research starts with the overview of historical dimensions of the civilizational approach and the contribution of the founding scholars to its development. It continues with the analysis of the scientific and methodological input of the followers and the critics of this approach. The authors suggest their theoretical approach to the identification of the modern local civilizations according (...)
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  42. Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences.Daniel Stephen Brooks, James DiFrisco & William C. Wimsatt (eds.) - 2021 - Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
    The subject of this edited volume is the idea of levels of organization: roughly, the idea that the natural world is segregated into part-whole relationships of increasing spatiotemporal scale and complexity. The book comprises a collection of essays that raise the idea of levels into its own topic of analysis. Owing to the wide prominence of the idea of levels, the scope of the volume is aimed at theoreticians, philosophers, and practicing researchers of all stripes in the life sciences. The (...)
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  43. The Machine Conception of the Organism in Development and Evolution: A Critical Analysis.Daniel J. Nicholson - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 48:162-174.
    This article critically examines one of the most prevalent metaphors in modern biology, namely the machine conception of the organism (MCO). Although the fundamental differences between organisms and machines make the MCO an inadequate metaphor for conceptualizing living systems, many biologists and philosophers continue to draw upon the MCO or tacitly accept it as the standard model of the organism. This paper analyses the specific difficulties that arise when the MCO is invoked in the study of development and evolution. In (...)
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  44. Control by Viability in a Chemotherapy Cancer Model.M. Serhani, H. Essaadi, K. Kassara & A. Boutoulout - 2019 - Acta Biotheoretica 67 (3):177-200.
    The aim of this study is to provide a feedback control, called the Chemotherapy Protocol Law, with the purpose to keep the density of tumor cells that are treated by chemotherapy below a “tolerance level” L_c, while retaining the density of normal cells above a “healthy level” N_c. The mathematical model is a controlled dynamical system involving three nonlinear differential equations, based on a Gompertzian law of cell growth. By evoking viability and set-valued theories, we derive sufficient conditions for the (...)
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  45. Beeing & Time: Kiss of Chemoreception & the Bug in Dasein's Mouth.Virgil W. Brower - 2014 - In Laurence Talairach-Vielmas & Marie Bouchet (eds.), Insects in Literature & the Arts. Brussels, Belgium: pp. 197-217.
    "Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection.".
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  46. Developmental Roles and Evolutionary Significance of AMPA‐Type Glutamate Receptors.Shinobu Hirai, Kohji Hotta & Haruo Okado - 2018 - Bioessays 40 (9):1800028.
    Organogenesis and metamorphosis require the intricate orchestration of multiple types of cellular interactions and signaling pathways. Glutamate (Glu) is an excitatory extracellular signaling molecule in the nervous system, while Ca2+ is a major intracellular signaling molecule. The first Glu receptors to be cloned are Ca2+‐permeable receptors in mammalian brains. Although recent studies have focused on Glu signaling in synaptic mechanisms of the mammalian central nervous system, it is unclear how this signaling functions in development. Our recent article demonstrated that Ca2+‐permeable (...)
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  47. The Energy Maintenance Theory of Aging: Maintaining Energy Metabolism to Allow Longevity.Snehal N. Chaudhari & Edward T. Kipreos - 2018 - Bioessays 40 (8):1800005.
    Fused, elongated mitochondria are more efficient in generating ATP than fragmented mitochondria. In diverse C. elegans longevity pathways, increased levels of fused mitochondria are associated with lifespan extension. Blocking mitochondrial fusion in these animals abolishes their extended longevity. The long‐lived C. elegans vhl‐1 mutant is an exception that does not have increased fused mitochondria, and is not dependent on fusion for longevity. Loss of mammalian VHL upregulates alternate energy generating pathways. This suggests that mitochondrial fusion facilitates longevity in C. elegans (...)
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  48. Epigenetic and Transcriptional Variability Shape Phenotypic Plasticity.Simone Ecker, Vera Pancaldi, Alfonso Valencia, Stephan Beck & Dirk S. Paul - 2018 - Bioessays 40 (2):1700148.
    Epigenetic and transcriptional variability contribute to the vast diversity of cellular and organismal phenotypes and are key in human health and disease. In this review, we describe different types, sources, and determinants of epigenetic and transcriptional variability, enabling cells and organisms to adapt and evolve to a changing environment. We highlight the latest research and hypotheses on how chromatin structure and the epigenome influence gene expression variability. Further, we provide an overview of challenges in the analysis of biological variability. An (...)
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  49. Multicellular Individuality: The Case of Bacteria.Rafael Ventura - 2019 - Biological Theory 14 (2):131-140.
    Recent attention to complex group-level behavior amongst bacteria has led some to conceive of multicellular clusters of bacteria as individuals. In this article, I assess these recent claims by first drawing a distinction between two concepts of individuality: physiological and evolutionary. I then survey cases that are representative of three different modes of growth: myxobacteria (surface-attached agglomerative growth), Bacillus subtilis (agglomerative growth not attached to a surface), and cyanobacteria (filamentous growth). A closer look at these cases indicates that multicellular individuality (...)
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  50. Targeting the Spleen as an Alternative Site for Hematopoiesis.Christie Short, Hong K. Lim, Jonathan Tan & Helen C. O'Neill - 2019 - Bioessays 41 (5):1800234.
    Bone marrow is the main site for hematopoiesis in adults. It acts as a niche for hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and contains non‐hematopoietic cells that contribute to stem cell dormancy, quiescence, self‐renewal, and differentiation. HSC also exist in resting spleen of several species, although their contribution to hematopoiesis under steady‐state conditions is unknown. The spleen can however undergo extramedullary hematopoiesis (EMH) triggered by physiological stress or disease. With the loss of bone marrow niches in aging and disease, the spleen as (...)
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