[Fis] Summing up: New Year Lecture

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

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
> wbmiller1 at cox.net

-- 
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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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