The Evolution of Cell Communication: The Road not Taken

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Genomics
• Cell Communication

Background:

• The post-genomic era necessitates new approaches to understanding evolutionary biology.
• Existing top-down and bottom-up methods are insufficient for capturing the emergent nature of evolution.
• A middle-out approach, linking developmental biology and functional genomics, is proposed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a working model for lung evolution using a middle-out, reverse-engineering strategy.
• To reduce evolutionary biology to fundamental principles of cell communication.
• To formulate testable hypotheses for the origins of physiological systems and identify candidate genes.

Main Methods:

• Reverse-engineering lung surfactant from mammalian lungs to fish swim bladders.
• Modeling evolutionary biology as a progression of cell communication: environment, cell-cell, and intergenerational.
• Utilizing functional genomic significance to identify signaling mechanisms.

Main Results:

• A cell-molecular model for lung evolution was configured, tracing it back to fish swim bladders.
• Evolutionary biology was successfully reduced to cell communication across different organismal complexities.
• The model predicts the evolution of physiological systems (development, homeostasis, aging) as a consequence of entropy reduction.

Conclusions:

• This approach offers a novel framework for evolutionary biology, focusing on cell communication and entropy reduction.
• It enables the formulation of refutable hypotheses and identifies candidate genes for evolutionary changes.
• The model lays the groundwork for predictive medicine and molecular bioethics, moving beyond correlational 'Just So Stories'.