Organizational requirements for multicellular autonomy: insights from a comparative case study

Arnellos, Argyris; Moreno, Álvaro; Ruiz-Mirazo, Kepa

doi:10.1007/s10539-013-9387-x

Cited by 36 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…At the intracellular level, the coordinated activity of organized constraints such as proteins, membranes and nucleic acids, contributes to the realization and maintenance of the organized system that contains them, by channeling the flow of matter and energy necessary to build these components and to run the internal processes of the system (Ruiz-Mirazo and Moreno, 2004). Multicellular systems, while constraining thermodynamic processes to sustain their own metabolism, also exert control upon the activity of the cells that constitute their tissues and organs (Arnellos et al, 2014;Longo et al, 2015;Montévil et al, 2016;Soto et al, 2016;Veloso, 2017;Bich et al, 2019). At both organizational levels, the set of mutually dependent control constraints is responsible for the realization of what we label the first-order regime of closure 4 (Figure 2A).…”

Section: Organizational Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure

2020

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Endocrinologists apply the idea of feedback loops to explain how hormones regulate certain bodily functions such as glucose metabolism. In particular, feedback loops focus on the maintenance of the plasma concentrations of glucose within a narrow range. Here, we put forward a different, organicist perspective on the endocrine regulation of glycaemia, by relying on the pivotal concept of closure of constraints. From this perspective, biological systems are understood as organized ones, which means that they are constituted of a set of mutually dependent functional structures acting as constraints, whose maintenance depends on their reciprocal interactions. Closure refers specifically to the mutual dependence among functional constraints in an organism. We show that, when compared to feedback loops, organizational closure can generate much richer descriptions of the processes and constraints at play in the metabolism and regulation of glycaemia, by making explicit the different hierarchical orders involved. We expect that the proposed theoretical framework will open the way to the construction of original mathematical models, which would provide a better understanding of endocrine regulation from an organicist perspective.

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Section: Organizational Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure

2020

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“…Far from representing a complete list, this demonstrates that T1 novelties require a more thorough understanding than shifting allele frequencies or the genotype’s immediate products. Other authors have commented on the need for such an inclusive approach to the origin of multicellular life (Arnellos et al 2013 ).…”

Section: Novelty In Evodevomentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenotypic Novelty in EvoDevo: The Distinction Between Continuous and Discontinuous Variation and Its Importance in Evolutionary Theory

Peterson

Müller

2016

Evol Biol

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The introduction of novel phenotypic structures is one of the most significant aspects of organismal evolution. Yet the concept of evolutionary novelty is used with drastically different connotations in various fields of research, and debate exists about whether novelties represent features that are distinct from standard forms of phenotypic variation. This article contrasts four separate uses for novelty in genetics, population genetics, morphology, and behavioral science, before establishing how novelties are used in evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo). In particular, it is detailed how an EvoDevo-specific research approach to novelty produces insight distinct from other fields, gives the concept explanatory power with predictive capacities, and brings new consequences to evolutionary theory. This includes the outlining of research strategies that draw attention to productive areas of inquiry, such as threshold dynamics in development. It is argued that an EvoDevo-based approach to novelty is inherently mechanistic, treats the phenotype as an agent with generative potential, and prompts a distinction between continuous and discontinuous variation in evolutionary theory.

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“…Cells are here key building blocks. Aggregations of cells may be combined into integrated multicellular organizations like animals (Arnellos et al 2014), and these can have new and different cognitive features both in their component systems and as a whole. Going from a unicellular to a multicellular configuration is a major change when it comes to a cobolic organization.…”

Section: Cobolic Diversity: No Mere Agents Any Morementioning

confidence: 99%

Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences

Keijzer

2020

Synthese

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This paper criticizes the role of intuition-based ascriptions of cognition that are closely related to the ascription of mind. This practice hinders the explication of a clear and stable target domain for the cognitive sciences. To move forward, the proposal is to cut the notion of cognition free from such ascriptions and the intuition-based judgments that drive them. Instead, cognition is reinterpreted and developed as a scientific concept that is tied to a material domain of research. In this reading, cognition becomes a changeable theoretical concept that can and must be adapted to the findings within this target domain. Taking humans as the best-established existing example of the relevant material target domain, this central case is extended to include all living systems. To clarify what it is about living systems that warrants their role as cognitive target domain, the new concept of cobolism is introduced as a complement to metabolism. Cobolism refers to the systematic ways in which each living system encompasses structures, processes and external events that maintain the fundamental metabolic processes that constitute the core of each living system. Cobolism is perfectly general, applies to bacterial and human cases alike, and provides a general format to describe wildly different cognitive organizations. It provides a clear target for the cognitive sciences to work on, turning them into what we can call the cognitive life sciences.

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Organizational requirements for multicellular autonomy: insights from a comparative case study

Cited by 36 publications

References 55 publications

Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure

Glycemia Regulation: From Feedback Loops to Organizational Closure

Phenotypic Novelty in EvoDevo: The Distinction Between Continuous and Discontinuous Variation and Its Importance in Evolutionary Theory

Demarcating cognition: the cognitive life sciences

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