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... interpretation may be true, but several important questions remain unanswered. First of them is: by what means a roughly normal shape of an early embryo is restored? This process is not explained by Driesch law. Moreover, well after Driesch it was shown that a normal shape can be restored from the cells arranged in a completely chaotic manner (Fig. 3). The second question is: what are the reference points for the recalculation procedure? Driesch formulation -"according to a whole"-is too vague, although, as we'll see later, such a vagueness has its own justifications. Meanwhile, in a new and a most popular version of Driesch law -a concept of "positional information" (PI) (Wolpert, ...
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... The investigation of the interlink between membrane tension and signaling events that are triggered by rapid tension variations has led to the conclusion on biomechanical, feedback-driven self-organization (Wedlich-Söldner and Betz 2018). It was shown that mechanical tension influenced cell proliferation, differentiation, and morphogenesis (Stamenovic and Ingber 2009;Beloussov 2012Beloussov , 2015Isaeva et al. 2012;Eroshkin and Zaraisky 2017). The cytoskeleton is the generator of morphogenesis at the cellular and supracellular levels, and cytoskeletal reorganization is the basis of metazoan morphogenesis (Vasiliev 2007;Stamenovic and Ingber 2009;Wedlich-Söldner and Betz 2018). ...
... Embryonic tissues are chemically "excitable media," the physical properties of which can explain some enigmatic developmental phenomena; physico-genetic determinants are essential in the evolution of development (Newman 2012). For developmental and evolutionary biology, the important physical constraint is mechanodependence (Ingber 2005;Nelson 2009;Stamenovic and Ingber 2009;Gilbert 2010;Beloussov 2012Beloussov , 2015Ambrosi et al. 2013). It is necessary to incorporate and integrate the physics into system biology (Stamenovic and Ingber 2009;Johnson and Lam 2010;Beloussov 2012Beloussov , 2015. ...
... For developmental and evolutionary biology, the important physical constraint is mechanodependence (Ingber 2005;Nelson 2009;Stamenovic and Ingber 2009;Gilbert 2010;Beloussov 2012Beloussov , 2015Ambrosi et al. 2013). It is necessary to incorporate and integrate the physics into system biology (Stamenovic and Ingber 2009;Johnson and Lam 2010;Beloussov 2012Beloussov , 2015. It was shown that mechanical tension is essential for the organization of the cytoskeleton and influences cell viability, proliferation, differentiation, and morphogenesis in cell systems (Vasiliev 2007;Isaeva et al. 2008;Beloussov 2012Beloussov , 2015. ...
The chapter presents an analytic description of evolutionary and developmental morphogenetic events in Metazoa using concepts of self-organization, morphological and molecular–genetic data, and the topological approach to the analysis. Biological objects are complex systems capable of dynamic self-organization at all levels of biological complexity. Some examples of self-organization in cyanobacteria, metazoan cells in vitro (chick embryo myogenic cells, molluscan hemocytes, sea urchin embryo cells), and animal communities of some vertebrates are shown. Following René Thom, a topological interpretation of some evolutionary and developmental transformations is presented using well-known mathematical concepts. Toroidal forms are considered as examples of functionally optimized biological design and attractors in metazoan morphogenesis. Molecular–genetic evidence of genomic–phenomic correlations determining the body plan and evolutionary trajectories in Metazoa is discussed. Gene regulatory networks and whole metazoan genomes are interpreted as self-organizing network systems dynamically transforming in development and evolution. Symmetry breaking, topological discontinuities and catastrophes, and body plan transformations are fundamental phenomena in metazoan development and evolution.
... Symmetry of biological structures can be defined as the repetition of parts in different positions and orientations to each other [14]. In addition to the rotation (radial symmetry), translation (metamerism), and reflection (bilateral symmetry) including mirror and glide reflection, many biological objects show scale (fractal) symmetry [3,4,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. M. Manuel [8] considered asymmetrical, spherical, cylindrical, n-radial, and bilateral symmetry as main types of symmetry in metazoan body plans; the author reasoned that the particular cases of rotational and reflection symmetries are sufficient for biologists, although a more general theory of organism geometry would require other kinds of symmetries, for example, translational and helicoidal symmetry, to be investigated. ...
... Symmetry breaking is one of the fundamental processes of development [25,26]. Symmetry breaking and "symmetry propagation" [27] are inevitable in evolution and development [3,4,20,25,27,28]. Biological morphogenesis has a dynamical character involving qualitative discontinuities as topological bifurcations tightly coupled with symmetry breaking, so developmental and evolutionary transformations of symmetry are discrete steps in biological morphogenesis inevitably disrupting a preexisting pattern of symmetry [17][18][19][20]29,30]. ...
... Symmetry breaking and "symmetry propagation" [27] are inevitable in evolution and development [3,4,20,25,27,28]. Biological morphogenesis has a dynamical character involving qualitative discontinuities as topological bifurcations tightly coupled with symmetry breaking, so developmental and evolutionary transformations of symmetry are discrete steps in biological morphogenesis inevitably disrupting a preexisting pattern of symmetry [17][18][19][20]29,30]. Both phylogeny and ontogeny include transitions from symmetry to dissymmetry, and the process is generally shifted towards symmetries decreasing [8,20,31]. ...
In this review, we consider transformations of axial symmetry in metazoan evolution and development, the genetic basis, and phenotypic expressions of different axial body plans. In addition to the main symmetry types in metazoan body plans, such as rotation (radial symmetry), reflection (mirror and glide reflection symmetry), and translation (metamerism), many biological objects show scale (fractal) symmetry as well as some symmetry-type combinations. Some genetic mechanisms of axial pattern establishment, creating a coordinate system of a metazoan body plan, bilaterian segmentation, and left–right symmetry/asymmetry, are analysed. Data on the crucial contribution of coupled functions of the Wnt, BMP, Notch, and Hedgehog signaling pathways (all pathways are designated according to the abbreviated or full names of genes or their protein products; for details, see below) and the axial Hox-code in the formation and maintenance of metazoan body plans are necessary for an understanding of the evolutionary diversification and phenotypic expression of various types of axial symmetry. The lost body plans of some extinct Ediacaran and early Cambrian metazoans are also considered in comparison with axial body plans and posterior growth in living animals.
... Convection consists of the coherent movement of millions of molecules forming hexagonal convection cells of a characteristic size (Fig. 4.36). (Beloussov 2012). 140 In classical physics, the evolution of some systems can be described by a scalar value that only depends on the initial and final state of the system. ...
Darwin aimed, with his theory of descent with modification through natural selection, to account for three biological explananda: the variety of living forms; the complexity of organisms, apparently increasing through the history of life; and adaptedness, or the fit of organisms to their environment. The success of this original research project 150 years after the publication of the Origin is uneven.
The Modern Synthesis, unifying Darwinism and genetics, formalizes, through population genetics, the first claim: traits in a population spread, get fixed, are lost and slowly change into new ones according to their fitness and to the strength of selection. On the other hand, population genetics does not make any claim about complexity, let alone about its putative increase.
Darwin’s theory is also the only known explanans for adaptedness. The evolutionary mindset known as adaptationism studies species’ traits and provides explanations about their adaptive origin. A mayor limitation of adaptationist explanations is their narrative nature: they cannot be tested. Several models have been proposed to overcome this limitation, from optimization programs to the ambitious Formal Darwinism Project by Alan Grafen. These proposals, however, focus on traits separately, and ignore the complexities of the architecture of organisms.
The issue of complexity thus remains either unaddressed (by population genetics) or taken for granted (by adaptationism): the modern synthesis simply claims that complex traits appears from mutations and recombination shaped slowly and incrementally by selection. Complexity comes from a Deus-ex-Machina hidden in the environment.
This approach, more and more challenged in the last decades, ignores many phenomena that do seem to affect phenotypic evolution, and that are accounted for by alternative, non-purely selective accounts. Many of them have been collected under the name of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (Laland et al. 2015). The range of phenomena targeted by these accounts spans from chemical-physical laws, to genetic (e.g. Cherniak & Rodriguez-Esteban 2013, Kimura 1983, Wagner 2015), developmental (e.g. Maynard Smith et al. 1985), systemic (e.g. Kauffman 2000) and neo-Lamarckian mechanisms (e.g. Koonin & Wolf 2009). None of these accounts denies the importance and even preponderance of selection in the history of life, and they rather aim at integrating non-selective phenomena into Neo-Darwinism (a view known as ‘pluralism’).
Although criticized by main-stream biology, we believe that pluralistic views and classical Neo-Darwinism can be integrated into a unified vision of evolution that formally accounts for organismal complexity. In the first place, we propose a definition of organismal architecture as form and function, going beyond the adaptationist consideration of organisms as just the sum of their optimised traits. In the second place, we suggest that fitness, being an intrinsically selective measure, should not be used to judge non-selective phenomena. We propose to use robustness instead, and we show how some non-selective forces impact the robustness of phenotypes. Finally, we present a model of evolutionary changes that maps populations as areas in a bi-dimensional space of fitness and robustness, where the effect of selection and of non-selective forces on shape and position of these areas can be tracked.
Complexity, interpreted as organismal architecture, thus appears to be the result of several synchronic processes, among which selection plays an important but not always a preponderant role.
... The relationship between genotype and phenotype is a complex non-linear network of interactions of genes, their molecular products, and epigenetic interactions of cells and cell systems in developmental processes, involving the influence of external and internal factors with the regulation of gene expression by epigenetic information. Integration of comparative genomics, phylogenomics and morphology, evolutionary developmental biology, and self-organization theory is needed to solve the problem of a complex, ambiguous relationship and interrelation of genomic and epigenomic factors (Beloussov, 2012(Beloussov, , 2015Koonin, 2012;Davies, 2013;Ogura and Busch 2016;Wanninger, 2016). In evolutionary developmental biology, the study of the relationship of genomic changes with the processes of morphogenesis is considered as a genotype-phenotype mapping followed by mapping in variations of the phenotype subjected to selection (Minelli, 2015;Dunn and Ryan, 2015;Ogura and Busch, 2016). ...
Comparative genomics helps to link characteristics of the genome and evolutionary trajectories by revealing the genomic correlates of morphological complexity and differences in the body plans of multicellular animals. Comparison of the organization of Hox clusters and expression of Hox genes with organismal morphology allows the emergence of macroevolutionary innovations as changes in morphogenesis and body plan of Bilateria, depending on the pattern of Hox code to be traced. We examine a correlation node that includes various types of organization of clustered (initially) Hox genes, early embryogenesis type, cellular developmental resources, thereby determining alternative evolutionary trajectories of various Bilateria taxa. Biological diversity inevitably manifests itself at all levels of organization and all stages of the evolution of the animal world, and therefore the reduction of the evolutionary strategies of Bilateria, and, moreover, all Metazoa, to a few simplified versions is impossible.
... Symmetry transformations play a key role in the biological morphogenesis and are necessarily present in development and evolution (Bouligand, 1996;Minelli, 2003;Hirokawa et al., 2009;Li and Bower man, 2010;Beloussov, 2012). In addition to the classi cal types of symmetry, such as rotational (radial), mir ror (bilateral), and translational symmetries (Weyl, 2003;Rosen, 2008;Beloussov, 2012), characteristic of biological processes is scale symmetry (self similarity symmetry), including nonlinear transformations (Minelli, 2003;Stuart, 2007;Urmantsev, 2007;Zarenkov, 2009). ...
... Symmetry transformations play a key role in the biological morphogenesis and are necessarily present in development and evolution (Bouligand, 1996;Minelli, 2003;Hirokawa et al., 2009;Li and Bower man, 2010;Beloussov, 2012). In addition to the classi cal types of symmetry, such as rotational (radial), mir ror (bilateral), and translational symmetries (Weyl, 2003;Rosen, 2008;Beloussov, 2012), characteristic of biological processes is scale symmetry (self similarity symmetry), including nonlinear transformations (Minelli, 2003;Stuart, 2007;Urmantsev, 2007;Zarenkov, 2009). The number of symmetry types involved in consideration gradually increases, includ ing nonlinear transformations (Shubnikov, 1960;Weyl, 2003;Urmantsev, 2007;Zarenkov, 2009). ...
... The gen eral principles of physics, geometry, and topology are applicable to biology (Bouligand, 1996;Isaeva et al., 2012). The geometry of embryo carries information nonreducible to other levels; mechano dependence is an important limitation in the development of organ isms (Beloussov, 2012). ...
Symmetry transformations are fundamental phenomena in the development and evolution of multicellular animals. Symmetry transformations at the cellular level during oogenesis and early development determine the basic axes of the future body, whereas the scale of these transformations is reduced in further development. In addition to the classical symmetry types, such as rotational (radial), mirror (bilateral), and translational symmetries, characteristic of biological processes is scale symmetry (self-similarity symmetry). The chaos is growing during fractal morphogenesis and other manifestations of fluctuating asymmetry. Biological symmetry and other variants of morphofunctional iterations are an effective way of morphogenesis via iteration of genetic programs.
Ervin Bauer was Hungarian and Soviet scientist, who had a short, but bright and talented life. In 1935, working at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in the USSR, he published the book “Theoretical Biology“, in which he proposed an idea of a special “non-equilibrium” state of living systems and the existence of internal machineries in the organism that work against thermodynamic equilibrium and increase the organism’s capacity for work. Currently, this idea is called “the principle of sustainable non-equilibrium” or “Bauer’s principle”. During the repressions of the 1930s in the USSR, Bauer was executed, the book “Theoretical Biology“ was banned. Currently, his works are poorly known, especially outside the post-socialist region. We believe that his ideas could help in rethinking not only the biochemistry and bioenergetics of cells and tissues of living organisms, but also biogeochemical and civilizational processes on a planetary scale.
Charles Darwin, the founder of the idea of natural selection, believed that this selection is not limited exclusively to biology: changes in language, consciousness, and technology are also adaptive. The transmission of culture is not a human prerogative. To date, several approaches for the understanding of the biological basis of cultural evolution were developed. Memetics stands out among other interdisciplinary theories that consider the development of culture and society through the prism of biological phenomena, because it is based on the concept of the biological replicator, meme and the mechanisms of cultural evolution are understood by analogy with biological evolution. The concepts of the biological and cultural replicators are similar; however, the nature of memes and the specific mechanisms of their replication are still poorly understood. In this review, we consider the strengths and weaknesses of the memetic approach to the study of cultural phenomena in the context of the cultural and technological evolution of mankind.
The first explanations of the mechanisms of development of living organisms were proposed in antiquity. At that time two competing ideas existed, about the strict determination of embryonic structures (we call it the “Hippocrates line”) and about the possible formation of structures from the unstructured condition (“Aristotle line”). We can trace the opposition between the “Hippocrates line” and “Aristotle line” from antiquity till the present time. At the end of the XIX century, experimental investigation of the mechanisms of integrity of development had started. In the XX century, the “Aristotle line” finds its expression in the Morphogenetic Field Theory of A.G. Gurwitsch, according to which cells of the organism are integrated in an organic whole. Since the 1970s, mechanical forces and tensions have been considered as integral factors of ontogenesis. One of the most productive scientific teams which worked in this area was the laboratory of Professor L.V. Beloussov from the Lomonossov Moscow State University, Russia. In the 1970s, Lev Beloussov and his colleagues discovered the presence of “passive” and “active” (i.e. metabolically-dependent) mechanical stresses in the tissues of developing organisms, their organization and stage-specific patterns. In 1980–1990 s, a lot of experimental data about the role of the patterns of mechanical stresses in morphogenesis and cell differentiation was accumulated. Based on the experimental data, Professor Beloussov and his colleagues developed a theory of the regulation of the development of living organisms on the basis of the interaction of passive and active mechanical stresses (Belousov-Mittenthal Theory), which forms the basis of a new science – morphomechanics.
