The Emergence of Physiology and Form: Natural Selection Revisited

Abstract

Natural Selection describes how species have evolved differentially, but it is descriptive, non-mechanistic. What mechanisms does Nature use to accomplish this feat? One known way in which ancient natural forces affect development, phylogeny and physiology is through gravitational effects that have evolved as mechanotransduction, seen in the lung, kidney and bone, linking as molecular homologies to skin and brain. Tracing the ontogenetic and phylogenetic changes that have facilitated mechanotransduction identifies specific homologous cell-types and functional molecular markers for lung homeostasis that reveal how and why complex physiologic traits have evolved from the unicellular to the multicellular state. Such data are reinforced by their reverse-evolutionary patterns in chronic degenerative diseases. The physiologic responses of model organisms like Dictyostelium and yeast to gravity provide deep comparative molecular phenotypic homologies, revealing mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) as the final common pathway for vertical integration of vertebrate physiologic evolution; mTOR integrates calcium/lipid epistatic balance as both the proximate and ultimate positive selection pressure for vertebrate physiologic evolution. The commonality of all vertebrate structure-function relationships can be reduced to calcium/lipid homeostatic regulation as the fractal unit of vertebrate physiology, demonstrating the primacy of the unicellular state as the fundament of physiologic evolution.

The cell's self-generated “electrome”: The biophysical essence of the immaterial dimension of Life?

“…As stated before, the biophysical principle enabling consciousness must have been present in the Progenote in the form of a First Physiological Principle 31 . Such principles have been conserved ever since.…”

“…This raises another question, namely whether the memory system(s) in “higher” organisms is still based upon the primordial memory system that came into being along with the Progenote? Given the fact that The First Principles of Physiology are remarkably well conserved in evolution, 31 discovering this ur-principle would help to uncover the central dogma of the cognitive memory system.…”