This book presents 19 selected contributions to the 16th Evolutionary Biology Meeting, which took place in September 2012 in Marseilles. The aims of these annual meetings, which gather together leading evolutionary biologists and other scientists, are to promote the exchange of ideas and to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations. The first chapter deals with the history of a great discovery: The first experiments on ascidian and sea urchin egg fertilization. The remaining contributions are grouped under the following categories: · Evolutionary biology concepts · Exobiology and the origin of life · Evolutionary mechanisms Offering an up-to-date overview of recent findings in the field of evolutionary biology, this book is an invaluable source of information for scientists, teachers and advanced students.
Evolution is not merely a chapter in biology textbooks; rather, it is the mesh that embraces and connects every biological phenomenon; indeed, as Dobzhansky pointed out, nothing in biology could be understood without the evolutionary logic. The contents of this book highlight the importance of evolution in applied biological sciences such as agricultural, medical, environmental and the social sciences. Evolutionary science provides renewed ideas which can result in practical applications and tools that deal with current problems concerning humanity, such as disease, food production, and environmental destruction. Most of the topics in this book were discussed during the III Summit on Evolution which took place in the Galapagos Islands in June 2013, hosted by the Galapagos Institute for the Arts and Sciences and the Galapagos Science Institute, Universidad San Francisco de Quito.
Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are one of the classical non-coding RNAs whose lengths are approximately 70–100 bases. The secondary structure of tRNAs can be represented as the cloverleaf with 4 stems, and the three dimensional structure as an “L” shape. Historically, the basic function of tRNA as an essential component of translation was established in 1960s, i.e., each tRNA is charged with a target amino acid and these are delivered to the ribosome during protein synthesis. However, recent data suggests that the role of tRNA in cellular regulation goes beyond this paradigm. In most Archaea and Eukarya, precursor tRNAs are often interrupted by a short intron inserted strictly between the first and second nucleotide downstream of the anticodon, known as canonical nucleotide position (37/38). Recently, a number of reports describe novel aspects of tRNAs in terms of gene diversity, for example, several types of disrupted tRNA genes have been reported in the Archaea and primitive Eukarya, including multiple-intron-containing tRNA genes, split tRNA genes, and permuted tRNA genes. Our understanding of the enzymes involved in tRNA functions (e.g., aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase, tRNA splicing endonuclease, tRNA ligase) has deepened. Moreover, it is well known that tRNA possesses many types of base modifications whose enzymatic regulations remain to be fully elucidated. It was reported that impaired tRNA nuclear-cytoplasmic export links DNA damage and cell-cycle checkpoint. Furthermore, a variety of additional functions of tRNA, beyond its translation of the genetic code, have emerged rapidly. For instance, tRNA cleavage is a conserved part of the responses to a variety of stresses in eukaryotic cells. Age-associated or tissue-specific tRNA fragmentation has also been observed. Several papers suggested that some of these tRNA fragments might be involve in the cellular RNA interference (RNAi) system. These exciting data, have lead to this call for a Research Topic, that plans to revisit and summarize the molecular biology of tRNA. Beyond the topics outlined above, we have highlighted recent developments in bioinformatics tools and databases for tRNA analyses.
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.
In addition of proposing a model of language based on a bio-mathematical reduction within a synthesis between deduction, induction it suggests a much more important role of learning symmetry (especially iconicity) parallel to Universal Grammar. Without any theoretical megalomania, the model you will be discovering, reading and hopefully discussing hypothesizes two propositional principles with an important role of thermodynamic information : the shift from the bio-semiotic to the semiotic order along with the neural/dynamic mapping is embedded in the shift from thermodynamic laws without proposition (methodologically defined by hypothetic-probabilistic states of the ''internal observer'', Boltzmann-Bernoulli proposals and quantization) to biological and cultural consciousness (selection, combination, self-reference and symmetry etc etc)
How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer. Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implicatons for embodied subjectivity. Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.
This book is a compilation of past and recent knowledge in the field of emerging drug resistance. The book covers major aspects of drug resistance in bacteria, fungi, malaria, and cancer.Human survival on earth is constantly threatened by disease and syndrome. From the early days, the aim of research in medicine was to find therapeutic agents that can improve the quality of human life. Although humans are dependent on natural compounds from early days their dependence of drugs increased excessively in last century. The advances in chemistry and biology have helped researchers to identify the drugs that have improved treatment of many diseases. The primary factor for treatment of these diseases is dependent on the efficacy of drugs available. The development of resistance to these drugs is one of the major hindrances. Although there are number of books available on this topic, “drug resistance” biology across kingdoms has never been discussed in a coherent way.
The book provides insight into the working of clays and clay minerals in speeding up a variety of organic reactions. Clay minerals are known to have a large propensity for taking up organic molecules and can catalyse numerous organic reactions due to fine particle size, extensive surface area, layer structure, and peculiar charge characteristics. They can be used as heterogeneous catalysts and catalyst carriers of organic reactions because they are non-corrosive, easy to separate from the reaction mixture, and reusable. Clays and clay minerals have an advantage over other solid acids as they are abundant, inexpensive, and non-polluting.
A New Ecology: Systems Perspective, Second Edition, gives an overview of the commonalities of all ecosystems from a variety of properties, including physical openness, ontic openness, directionality, connectivity, a complex dynamic for growth and development, and a complex dynamic response to disturbances. Each chapter details basic and characteristic properties that help the reader understand how they can be applied to explain a wide spectrum of current ecological research and environmental management applications. - Contains revised, updated or redeveloped chapters that include the most current research and technology - Reviews universal traits of ecosystems from multiple perspectives, giving the reader a complete overview of the systems perspective of ecology - Offers broad examples of ecology as a systems science, from the history of science, to philosophy and the arts - Brings together the systems perspective in a framework of four columns for greater understanding, including thermodynamics, network theory, hierarchy theory and biochemistry - Contains new chapter on the application of the theory to environmental management
"Theory. Traced to its Greek roots, "theory" means to see inwards; to theorize is to use our mind's eye systematically, following articulated principles, to discern meaningful patterns among observations and ideas (Oxford English Dictionary [OED] 2022). The implication is that without theory, observation is blind and explanation is impossible"--
