[Fis] New Year Lecture

Tue Jan 9 19:05:09 CET 2018

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
wbmiller1 at cox.net

On 1/9/2018 5:19 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote:
> Dear  Soeren and Colleagues,
>
> The symbiogenesis theme (Margulis' endosymbiotic theory) is one of the 
> aspects to reconsider/reenter into the basically evo-info (if I may 
> say) novissima synthesis. Margulis views were received in the 70's and 
> 80's with tremendous hostility from the Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy. After 
> a long series of turmoils it was accepted in many realms, particularly 
> in popular science and textbooks industry, and even by the always 
> reluctant Neo-Darwinians. Paradoxically in recent times the 
> bioinformatic and omic research on the origins of eukaryotes has put 
> into question basic tenets of that theory. The "deep sequencing" 
> research on protein families has also be problematic for 
> symbiogenesis. It does not mean that it is wrong, but that it is more 
> complicated than previously thought... That is my opinion at least. In 
> the present discussion, however, there are very knowledgeable parties 
> that can give more specific arguments about that.
>
> Talking about Neo-Darwinians, the paragraph from John Torday that I 
> highlighted (see at the bottom) reminds me strongly from that other 
> from Richard Dawkins' (in The Selfish Gene):
>
>
>   /“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to
>   preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which
>   still fills me with astonishment.”/
>
> If we compare both paragraphs, the essential difference relies on 
> information. Torday's unicells develop not really multicell robots, 
> but info agents that collect information  about the environment, 
> including the whole elements of the niche (i.e., including in the 
> human case from the "microbiome" to the "sociotype"). And fortunately 
> the emphasis on "selfishness" has disappeared. Perhaps one of the 
> consequences of Margulis work has been ideological, implying some 
> general opening of views. Besides that, we should pay close attention 
> to some "invisible threads" inside/outside those robots, like puppet 
> strings: let me emphasize the enormous evolutionary importance of 
> viruses in eukaryotic origins and evolution, and in epigenetic 
> phenomena. Really masterminding the whole topological/architectural 
> molecular processes.
>
> In any event, for the purpose of the discussion, I bet that the new 
> synthesis, the "novissimima", has to be evo-info... or it won't be!
> (spoonful of salt, please)
> All the best--Pedro
>
>
> El 06/01/2018 a las 18:05, Søren Brier escribió:
>>
>> Dear Pedro
>>
>> I am wondering why no one seems to think that Lynn Margulis’ theory 
>> that cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts were once 
>> independent bacteria  is a crucial contribution to cell biology in 
>> evolution theory ?
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Søren Brier
>>
>> 2017 JPBMB Focused Issue on Integral Biomathics: The Necessary 
>> Conjunction of Western and Eastern Thought Traditions for Exploring 
>> the Nature of Mind and Life 
>> <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796107/131>  *
>>
>> * free promotional access to all focused issue articles until June 
>> 20th 2018
>>
>> *From:*Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] *On Behalf Of *PEDRO 
>> CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ
>> *Sent:* 5. januar 2018 14:40
>> *To:* JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu>; fis at listas.unizar.es
>> *Subject:* Re: [Fis] New Year Lecture
>>
>> head>
>>
>> Dear John and FIS Colleagues,
>>
>> Many thanks for this opening text of the NY Lecture. Indeed 
>> you have presented us an intricate panorama on one of the most 
>> obscure scientific problems of our time: the central theory of 
>> biology. As you say, we find with astonishment that there is 
>> literally no cell biology in evolution theory. And I would ad that 
>> there is no "information biology" either. A central theory becomes 
>> sort of a big Hall, where plenty of disciplinary corridors converge 
>> and later criss-cross among themselves. Darwinian theory is not that 
>> common hall for the really big, big science domain of biology. What 
>> are or where are the elements to rebuild the common Hall of the 
>> biological domain? I quote from your opening text:
>>
>> */"It is as if the unicellular state delegates its progeny to 
>> interact with the environment as agents, collecting data to inform 
>> the recapitulating unicell of ecological changes that are occurring. 
>> Through the acquisition and filtering of epigenetic marks via 
>> meiosis, fertilization, and embryogenesis, even on into adulthood, 
>> where the endocrine system dictates the length and depth of the 
>> stages of the life cycle, now known to be under epigenetic control, 
>> the unicell remains in effective synchrony with environmental changes."/*
>>
>> It is really brilliant: a heads up reversal perspective. I think out 
>> of these ideas there are plenty of disciplinary excursions to make. 
>> One is "informational", another "topological". Putting together two 
>> different algorithmic descriptions and making them to build a torus 
>> (i.e., gastrula") as a universal departure for multicellularity also 
>> reminds the ideas of Stuart Pivart ("Omnia Ex Torus") about the 
>> primordials of multicellularity and the role of mechanical forces in 
>> the patterning of developmental processes.
>>
>> Echoing the ideas discussed in the Royal Society meeting (November 
>> 2016), there is a pretty long list of elements to take into account 
>> together with epigenetic inheritance (symbiogenesis, viruses and 
>> mobile elements, multilevel selection, niche construction, genomic 
>> evolution...). As I have suggested above, essential informational 
>> ideas are missing too, and this absence of the informational 
>> perspective in the ongoing evo discussions is not a good thing.
>>
>> i any case, it is such a great theme to ponder...
>>
>> Best wishes to all
>>
>> --Pedro
>>
>>   On Wed, 3 Jan 2018 07:15:43 -0800 JOHN TORDAY wrote:
>>
>> blockquote>
>>
>> Dear FIS Colleagues, I have attached my New Year Lecture at the 
>> invitation of Professor Pedro Clemente Marijuan Fernandez. The 
>> content relates a novel perspective on the mechanism of evolution 
>> from a cellular-molecular vantage-point. I welcome any and all 
>> comments and criticisms in the spirit of sharing ideas openly and 
>> constructively. Best Wishes,
>>
>> John S. Torday PhD
>>
>> Professor
>>
>> Evolutionary Medicine
>>
>> UCLA
>>
>> /div>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> -------------------------------------------------
> 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.iacs at aragon.es
> http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>
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