[Fis] Fwd: Contingency biological signals: Sex and Being
Pedro C. Marijuán
pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com
Tue Dec 2 20:19:00 CET 2025
Dear John and FIS Colleagues,
Thanks for the well crafted, dense bio paragraphs. Although I agree with
most of the comments --not with all-- the main problem I see that it is
a really too condensed a summary. It reminds me the great little book by
French biologist Max Pavans de Ceccatty "La vie: de la cellule à
l'homme" (1962), put in just half page. Given the brevity needed, I will
just point to three extra themes that for my taste are relevant:
signaling and the life cycle, role of the "virome" in eukaryotic
complexity and multicellular life, and the tangled threads of
Anthropogenesis.
The former one, signaling and the life cycle, represents "the path not
taken" about the deep meaning of cellular signaling. From the beginning
it was conceived within the input-processing-output paradigm of
techno-computer and artificial systems. It did not help the concept of
signaling as "structural coupling" with the milieu, from the thought of
Maturana and Varela. In any event, the information flow (signaling)
necessary interrelationship with the energy flow (metabolism) has not
been properly integrated with the great sink and source for both flows:
the life cycle. Perhaps making the cycle "modular", and susceptible to
be maintained conveniently "frozen" along its different phases,
represented the basis of cell differentiation & specialized tissues via
signaling codes... Further, any complex form of life has had to maintain
the same openness to the info flows of its niche in order to propel the
advancement of its own life cycle. And let me stop here.
About the virome, following Villareal, Witzany, and many others, the
motto "Ex virus omnia" means that a new, forgotten realm of life has to
be added to Margulis’ endosymbiotic theory (Margulis, 1981, 1970), so
incorporating viruses’ essential evolutionary role within the present
discussions around the renewal or replacement of evolutionary theory
(Noble, 2016). In fact, one the most important genome modifications of
eukaryotes has come from the systematic activity of components of viral
provenance: mobile elements, transposons, retrotransposons, repetitive
elements and so on. Seemingly (Shapiro) our species has counted with
around 4 million mobile insertion events. As a result, ancestral viral
proteins can be found in signaling pathways of all kind, and all across
the mammalian and human proteomes.
And finally about Anthropogenesis, let me copy from a recent study: "By
employing 471 whole-genome sequence samples, including archaic humans
(Neanderthals, Denisovans and more), modern humans, other vertebrates
(fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, rodents, mammals) plus four
coelacanth and three lungfish samples, together with 18 human
cognition-related genes and their total of 223 SNVs (Single-Nucleotide
Variations),comparative analyses revealed that the CGPPs (cognition gene
polymorphism patterns) of both coelacanths and lungfish are
evolutionarily closer to those of archaic humans than those of most
other animal groups. The CGPP appears to occupy an evolutionary
inflection point, bridging diverse animal lineages to archaic hominoids.
Our observational results suggest a hypothesis (to be validated in the
future) that *the genetic architecture underlying human cognition seems
to have been established during the evolutionary stage of fish,
predating the emergence of tetrapods*..." Amazing!! (From Zhizhou Zhang
et al., 2025, https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://doi.org/10.20935/AcadMolBioGen8001__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UusxFDTBk3ZUgkvJ1A6efTRkbVH1ghY7Hqm_3tckntBOt0NwXJpwRR3yOZ0vQsEj9vRbkhxP9L0TnovknBDPEK5Ao7cg$ ). By the way,
there is a special issue on Anthropogenesis to appear soon in
BioSystems, where brain evolution, sexual selection, social niche,
emergence of language, cognition, etc. are updated and discussed
(editors Marijuan, Igamberdiev, Iurato, 2025)--great job by Andrei. We
will send soon the link.
Best regards,
--Pedro
> El 23/11/2025 a las 18:20, JOHN TORDAY escribió:
>> Dear Eric, I am afraid you have misunderstood my allusion to the role
>> gravity plays in evolution, in my opinion, based totally on
>> experimental evidence. It becomes most apparent and relevant in the
>> vertebrate transition from water to land, when fish adapted to land
>> (a known fact). During that transition there were three hormone
>> receptors that duplicated- the Parathyroid Hormone Receptor (PTHrP),
>> the Glucocorticoid Receptor (GR) and the beta-adrenergic receptor
>> (beta-AR). Which came first is the question I have pondered for many
>> years, only recently coming to the realization that it must have been
>> the PTHrP receptor that duplicated first, given that it determines
>> bone 'stiffness', and the skeleton would have been under stress due
>> to the effective force of gravity on land versus in water. Those
>> members of the species that were able to 'up-regulate' their PTHrP
>> receptor most readily for bone would have done so successively in the
>> swim bladder to drive its evolution in becoming the lung, as
>> evidenced by the fact that in the absence of PTHrP the lung does not
>> alveolarize (Rubin et al, 2004), followed by the role of PTHrP in
>> forming kidney glomeruli from the fish kidney glomus, and the
>> augmentation of the stress signal from pituitary to adrenal cortex to
>> produce adrenaline and cortisol. We know that there must have been
>> such a scenario since fish attempted to breech land on at least 5
>> separate occasions (see Clack, J.A., Gaining Ground, 2012). The
>> relevance of these physiologic adaptations can be seen in astronauts
>> who experience osteoporosis due to PTHrP deficiency (see Torday, 2003
>> for evidence of such) as well as kidney complications due to
>> down-regulation of PTHrP control of salt and water balance. So in the
>> aggregate, in reply to your comment that "gravity would not directly
>> control the growth of a bilateral gynandromorph that is half female
>> and half male down the middle", I would beg to differ based on the
>> hormonal adaptations for land life, which are fundamental to land
>> vertebrate physiologic adaptations for skeletal integrity, breathing,
>> salt and water balance, if you get my point. And all of these
>> physiologic traits are essential for the bipedalism that freed our
>> forelimbs for tool-making, including speaking, and locomotion, all of
>> which are under the control of the FoxP2 gene and are 'housed' within
>> the Area of Broca (see Torday JS. A central theory of biology. Med
>> Hypotheses. 2015 Jul;85(1):49-57). It is this transition from
>> crawling on all fours to standing on two legs due to the advent of
>> endothermy that marks the evolution of our over-seized central
>> nervous system....and as a consequence, at some point in human
>> evolution our heads became too large to fit in the birth canal so we
>> are born prematurely, with only 25% of brain capacity, requiring
>> decades of nurturing by family and society in order to effectively
>> mature as a species, if ever (I note my current President).
>>
>> As for your glib comment about "The issue is more understanding the
>> information that makes a difference (Oh dear I have slipped into
>> Spencer Brown"......In this regard, I think you misunderstand
>> Spencer-Brown too in that what he was telling us is that we are
>> fractals of a 'holism' as the unmarked space.
>>
>> And as for your flippant comment about "gravity does not make the
>> difference between a whale and a dog" I again beg your pardon, but
>> gravity is exactly what makes the difference between a whale and a
>> dog, referring again to gravity's effects on the physiologic traits
>> of each on land (dog) and in water (whale) given that seals are
>> thought to have evolved back to water from dogs......
>>
>> But you may take exception to what I am saying, so have at it. I am
>> of the opinion that the way I have traced evolution from cell to our
>> 'selves' accounts for the evolution of consciousness from the former
>> to the latter as I have expressed in numerous peer-reviewed articles,
>> and 14 monographs.
>>
>> Best, John
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 11:11 AM OARF <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:
>>
>> Dear john,
>> There is a difference between necessary conditions that are just
>> that and offer no information that controls the growth of
>> detailed structure in multicellular organisms that differentiates
>> one from another and conditions like gravity that apply to all
>> such developmental processes. Thus, for example, gravity would
>> not directly control the growth of a bilateral gynandromorph that
>> is half female and half male down the middle. See:
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5439__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UusxFDTBk3ZUgkvJ1A6efTRkbVH1ghY7Hqm_3tckntBOt0NwXJpwRR3yOZ0vQsEj9vRbkhxP9L0TnovknBDPEDwcoYq4$ for more details.
>>
>> But I agree that gravity and oxygen certainly have their effects
>> on development.
>> The issue is more understanding the information that makes a
>> difference (Oh dear I have slipped into Spencer Brown ;-) ).
>> and gravity does not make the difference between a whale and a dog.
>>
>> Best,
>> Eric
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>> On Nov 23, 2025, at 3:05 PM, JOHN TORDAY <jtorday at ucla.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> To Eric, Gordana, Howard, regarding the role of sex in
>>> evolution, I would like to point out that the role of gravity in
>>> evolution also entails sex in the following way. In the study of
>>> the effect of microgravity on yeast, the simplest eukaryote,
>>> they cannot 'bud' as form of asexual reproduction in
>>> microgravitational conditions (Purevdorj-Gage B, Sheehan KB,
>>> Hyman LE. Effects of low-shear modeled microgravity on cell
>>> function, gene expression, and phenotype in Saccharomyces
>>> cerevisiae. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2006 Jul;72(7):4569-75). I
>>> am of the opinion that it is only in addressing the evolutionary
>>> ontology as it corresponds with the epistemology that an
>>> adaptive trait can be understood, as in the case of sex as a
>>> means of adapting to an ever-changing environment. In the case
>>> of yeast, budding is a means of epigenetic inheritance of
>>> environmental factors relevant to its adaptation, and the force
>>> of gravity affects that process. These authors also observed
>>> that the yeast could not conduct a calcium flux under
>>> microgravity, rendering them unconscious 'zombies'. I share this
>>> information with you in an attempt to find a final common
>>> pathway for the process of evolution, ultimately referring to
>>> the elements in the Cosmos as the latter's 'logic', as I
>>> expressed it in an accompanying email earlier today....Best, John
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 8:13 AM OARF <eric.werner at oarf.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Gordana,
>>>
>>> I was just responding to Howard’s more general point beyond
>>> bacteria. Eukaryotes have sex an inherently social process.
>>> Sexuality is fundamentally a cooperative process, at many
>>> levels of organization. Even social at the level of the
>>> genome: See my theory of meta-genome interactions between
>>> the sexes. It is particularly clear in the case physically
>>> mixed sex organisms (this can be neurological as well). See
>>> the theory applied to mixed sex organisms or gynandropmorphs:
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5439__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UusxFDTBk3ZUgkvJ1A6efTRkbVH1ghY7Hqm_3tckntBOt0NwXJpwRR3yOZ0vQsEj9vRbkhxP9L0TnovknBDPEDwcoYq4$
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5439__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XLF-Q-SqJ-AuvQ-dic9ptw82Ooe57dI4UX6ePa7CTWADakJMPTruAnfSd0yTCHhsfb-S3Rv04mCA4h3ClsatzQ4$>
>>> So the sexuality of being is inherently social.
>>>
>>> -Eric
>>>
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ericwerner.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!UusxFDTBk3ZUgkvJ1A6efTRkbVH1ghY7Hqm_3tckntBOt0NwXJpwRR3yOZ0vQsEj9vRbkhxP9L0TnovknBDPEPl_2tpU$
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ericwerner.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XLF-Q-SqJ-AuvQ-dic9ptw82Ooe57dI4UX6ePa7CTWADakJMPTruAnfSd0yTCHhsfb-S3Rv04mCA4h3CaUt82MM$>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>>
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