Phenotypic Switching: Implications in Biology and Medicine

Phenotypic Switching: Implications in Biology and Medicine provides a comprehensive examination of phenotypic switching across biological systems, including underlying mechanisms, evolutionary significance, and its role in biomedical science. Contributions from international leaders discuss conceptual and theoretical aspects of phenotypic plasticity, its influence over biological development, differentiation, biodiversity, and potential applications in cancer therapy, regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy, among other treatments. Chapters discuss fundamental mechanisms of phenotypic switching, including transition states, cell fate decisions, epigenetic factors, stochasticity, protein-based inheritance, specific areas of human development and disease relevance, phenotypic plasticity in melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, non-genetic heterogeneity in cancer, hepatitis C, and more.

This book is essential for active researchers, basic and translational scientists, clinicians, postgraduates and students in genetics, human genomics, pathology, bioinformatics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology and adaptive opportunities in yeast.

Thoroughly addresses the conceptual, experimental and translational aspects that underlie phenotypic plasticity Emphasizes quantitative approaches, nonlinear dynamics, mechanistic insights and key methodologies to advance phenotypic plasticity studiesFeatures a diverse range of chapter contributions from international leaders in the field

1. The fundamentals of phenotypic plasticity

2. Rethinking the role of chance in the explanation of cell differentiation

3. Random walk across the epigenetic landscape

4. Maneuvering protein functions and functional levels by structural excursions

5. Prion-mediated phenotypic diversity in fungi

6. Bistability in virus - host interaction networks underlies the succes of hepatitis C treatments

7. Quantifyinh Waddington landscapes, paths, and kinetics of cell fate decision making of differentiation/development

8. The physics of cell fate

9. Disentangling the environmentally induced and stochastic development components of phenotypic variation

10. The evolution of cell differentiation in animals: biomolecular condensates as amplification hubs of inherent cell functions

11. Phenotypic switching and its evolutionary consequences

12. Cell-state organization by exploratory sloppy dynamics

13. Emergence of metabolic heterogeneity in cell populations: lessons from budding yeast

14. Stochastic phenotypic switching in endothelial cell heterogeneity

15. Regulation of phenotypic plasticity from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology

16. Phenotypic plasticity and the origins of novelty

17. Niche construction and the transition to herbivory: Phenotype switching and the organization of new nutritional modes

18. NAture, nurture, and noise in bird song ontogeny as determinants of phenotypic and functional variation among dialects

19. Domestication as a process generating phenotypic diversity

20. The glycobiology of ovarian cnacer progression: phenotypic switches an microenvironmental influences

21.Epithelia-mesenchymal transition in cancer

22. Phenotypic switching and prostate diseases: a model proposing a causal link benign prostatic hyperplasia and prostate cancer

23. Phenotypic plasticty and lineage switching in prostate cancer

24. Implications of non-genetic heterogeneity in cancer drug resistance and malignant progression

25. Phenotypic plasticity: the emergence of cancer stem cells and collective cell migration

26. Adaptive phenotypic switching in breast cancer in response to matric deprivation

27. Phenotypic instability induced by tissue disuption at the origin of cancer

28. Evolutionary strategies to overcome cancer cell resistance ot treatment