Evolution, the Logic of Biology

By focusing on the cellular mechanisms that underlie ontogeny, phylogeny and regeneration of complex physiologic traits, Evolution, the Logic of Biology demonstrates the use of homeostasis, the fundamental principle of physiology and medicine, as the unifying mechanism for evolution as all of biology. The homeostasis principle can be used to understand how environmental stressors have affected physiologic mechanisms to generate condition–specific novelty through cellular mechanisms.

Evolution, the Logic of Biology allows the reader to understand the vertebrate life–cycle as an intergenerational continuum in support of effective, on–going environmental adaptation. By understanding the principles of physiology from their fundamental unicellular origins, culminating in modern–day metazoans, the reader as student, researcher or practitioner will be encouraged to think in terms of the prevention of disease, rather than in the treatment of disease as the eradication of symptoms.

By tracing the ontogeny and phylogeny of this and other phenotypic homologies, one can perceive and understand how complex physiologic traits have mechanistically evolved from their simpler ancestral and developmental origins as cellular structures and functions, providing a logic of biology for the first time.

Evolution, the Logic of Biology will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers studying evolutionary development, medicine and biology, anthropology, comparative and developmental biology, genetics and genomics, and physiology.

Preface

Preface ix

1 Introduction 1

2 On the Fractal Nature of Evolution 13

3 The Historic Perspective on Paracrinology and Evolution as Lead –ins to a Systems Biology Approach 23

4 Evolution of Adipocyte Differentiation Related Protein, or Oh, the Places You ll Go Theodore Geissel, Aka Dr Seuss 37

5 Evolutionary Ontology and Epistemology 49

6 Calcium –Lipid Epistasis: Like Ouroboros, the Snake, Catching its Tail! 65

7 The Lung Alveolar Lipofibroblast: An Evolutionary Strategy Against Neonatal Hyperoxic Lung Injury 77

8 Bio –Logic 85

9 Cell Signaling as the Basis for all of Biology 107

10 Information + Negentropy + Homeostasis = Evolution 119

11 Vertical Integration of Cytoskeletal Function from Yeast to Human 125

12 Yet Another Bite of the Evolutionary Apple 135

13 On Eliminating the Subjectivity from Biology: Predictions 165

14 The Predictive Value of the Cellular Approach to Evolution 173

15 Homeostasis as the Mechanism of Evolution 189

16 On the Evolution of Development 201

17 A Central Theory of Biology 219

18 Implications of Evolutionary Physiology for Astrobiology 231

19 Pleiotropy Reveals the Mechanism of Evolutionary Novelty 257

20 Meta –Darwinism 267

Index 279

John S. Torday, PhD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Ob/Gyn, Director of The Henry L. Guenther Laboratory for Cell/Molecular Research, Director of Laboratory for Evolutionary Preventive Medicine at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, CA, USA and a member of the Faculty in the Evolutionary Medicine Program at the University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Virender K. Rehan, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center Torrance, CA, USA.