Project News

September 2
An idea with bite: Why the selfish genes metaphor remains a powerful thinking tool

The ‘selfish gene’ persists for the reason all good scientific metaphors do: it remains a sharp tool for clear thinking. J Arvid Ågren writes in Aeon.

ASSOCIATED PROJECTS
August 2
"Self-organization in embryonic development: myth and reality": Relationships between physical and evolved types of developmental self-organization

Using the examples of gastrulation, somitogenesis, and limb skeletal development, this chapter provides instances of, and a conceptual framework for understanding, the relationships between physical and evolved types of developmental self-organization. Stuart A. Newman writes in Quantitative Biology.

ASSOCIATED PROJECTS
August 2
"Genes used together are more likely to be fused together in evolution by mutational mechanisms"

This mutational hypothesis offers to explain both evolutionary parallelism and recurrence in disease of gene fusions under one umbrella. Here, we test this hypothesis using bioinformatic data. Evgeni Bolotin, Daniel Melamed, and Adi Livnat write in bioRxiv.

ASSOCIATED PROJECTS
August 20
Functional integration and individuality in prokaryotic collective organisations: A discussion of the organisational differences between biofilms and prokaryotic endosymbiosis

This paper has three aims: first, to analyse the organisational conditions and the physiological mechanisms that enable integration in prokaryotic associations; second, to discuss the organisational differences between biofilms and prokaryotic endosymbiosis and the types of integration they achieve; finally, to provide a more precise account of functional integration based on these case studies. Guglielmo Militello, Leonardo Bich and Alvaro Moreno write in Acta Biotheoretica.

ASSOCIATED PROJECTS