The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles--sometimes overt, sometimes masked--throughout the history of biology, and frequently in very normative ways, also shifting between the biological and the social....

The embryo of the domestic fowl (Gallus gallus) holds the record as the animal with the longest continuous history as an experimental model for studies in developmental biology, spanning more than 2 Millenia. Throughout this time, it attracted great naturalists, artists, philosophers, and pioneers of biology and stimulated them to think about the most fundamental questions on generation and lif...

THE DECODING of the human genome in 2003 provided enormous opportunities to gain a greater understanding of the genetic intricacies underlying biological systems in both health and disease. Along with variations in the linear sequence of the genome that may predispose to certain pathologies, there is increasing evidence that epigenetic factors can profoundly influence gene expression and, in tu...

The past decade has seen an explosion of articles in scientific journals involving non-genetic influences on phenotype through modulation of gene function without changes in gene sequence. The excitement in modern molecular biology surrounding the impact exerted by the environment on development of the phenotype is focused largely on mechanism and has not incorporated questions asked (and answe...

In their considered comments both Thomas Pradeu and Lindell Bromham introduce important topics not sufficiently covered in our book. Pradeu asks us to enlarge on the epigenetic and ecological context of genes, particularly in the form of symbioses. We use the relationship between eukaryotes and their symbiotic organisms as a welcome opportunity to clarify our concept of the developmental niche,...

In the past decade, the genes involved in the pathogenesis of type 1 and type 2 diabetes have been identified by a comprehensive search over the whole genome, the genome-wide association study (GWAS). The method is now carried out by a dramatically improved technique to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with different frequency between the control and the disease group. SNP, however...

As Current Medicine faces the mandate for massive reformulation geriatrics provides the template. In it are found the critical new basic science that underlies life-long health, and the time honored tradition of “caring.” Keywords: Aging, death, disuse syndrome, epigenesis, frailty, geriatrics, hypokinetic disease, medication, sedentary death syndrome. EVERY PROJECTION CONCLUDES THAT THE GRAY D...

SHIRLEY A. ROE, Matter, life, and generation. Eighteenth-century embryology and the HallerWolffdebate, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. x, 214, illus., £16.00. Professor Roe has set herself modest aims, but she fulfils them with convincing scholarship and clarity of exposition. Recognizing, as Jacques Roger showed in his magisterial Les sciences de la vie dans la pense'e franCaise du XVIIi...

Lawrie et al’s editorial on the ‘continuum of psychosis’ is timely and welcome. I see this debate two ways: as a doctor needing order to help ease suffering, I agree that it is better, for the time being, to keep existing diagnostic categories of psychiatric disorder, however imperfect they may be. As a patient, I of course want care, but I also want to be understood. Many psychiatrists now con...

The premise of this paper is that civilization is in the midst of a fundamental historical transformation whose outcome remains profoundly uncertain. Some form of planetary society will crystallize over the coming decades as a result of interacting global factors – economic globalization, cultural influence, information technology, geopolitical and social fissures, and alterations of critical b...