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EPIGENETIC SPANNER IN THE DOGMA. “The induction mechanisms emerge as the embryo interacts with its environment. Morphogenesis is not entirely hard-wired into the genome.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

DOGMAS FAIL. “Cardiac rhythm is clearly integrated at the level of the pacemaker sinus node cell, and does not even exist below that level. The principle can be restated in a more precise way by saying that the level at which each function is integrated is at least partly a matter of experimental discovery. There should be no dogmas when it comes to causation in biological systems.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY AND DEATH. "But the permanent coupling of each cell fate to the nature of the interactions it can establish with the collectivity to which it belongs, represents only one dimension of the 'social control' of cell survival and cell death." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

ADAPTIVE PLASTICITY OF SOMA. "This very frailty, this permanent reprieve and the interdependence they generate between our cells, are one of the bases of our perennity and our plasticity, allowing our bodies to build themselves, to constantly reconstruct, and to adapt to ever changing environments." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this reflection of Denis Nobel’s provocative thinking that rocks the boat of the central dogma of molecular biology and Neo-Darwinism. It is the nature of Khunian scientific revolutions that knowledge itself continues to evolve, often through a series of upheavals and periods of extreme resistance to new ideas. But in the end, per the adage, we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. View in LinkedIn

TWO WAY CAUSATION IS REAL. “The question is not whether downward causation of the kind discussed in this article exists, it is rather how best to incorporate it into biological theory and experimentation.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

CLUMSY TOOLS. “While I think we can be certain that multi-level causation with feedbacks between all the levels is an important feature of biological organisms, the tools we have to deal with such causation need further development.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

THE UNIMAGINABLE. “We may need to think the unimaginable in order fully to understand the multi-scale nature of biology. The concept of scale is, after all, deeply connected to our conception of space–time.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

SCALE MATTERS. “These are practical reasons why the equations we use are scale-dependent. The formal theory of scale relativity goes much further since it proposes that it is theoretically necessary that the differential equations should be scale-dependent.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn

MACRO TO MICRO. “The equations for structure and for the way in which elements move and interact in that structure in biology necessarily depend on the resolution at which it is represented.” http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/55 View in LinkedIn