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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

FAMILIES OF GENES. "During the last nine years, homologues of genes involved in the regulation of programmed cell death in Caenorhabditis elegans have been identified in sponge, in Hydra vulgaris, in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, in zebrafish, in mice and in humans." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

GENETIC ORIGIN. "The identification of a regulated cell death program inducing an apoptotic phenotype in nine different single-celled eukaryote organisms that belong to four diverging branches of the eukaryote phylogenic tree provides a paradigm for a widespread role for programmed cell death in the control of cell survival, and raises the question of the origin and nature of the genes that may be involved in the execution and regulation of such a process." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

TRIGGERS. "Programmed cell death induction may depend essentially on cell-lineage information, such as in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, on the activation of gene transcription, such as in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, or, in a more stochastic way, on a combination of cell-lineage information, intercellular signaling, transcription factor activation and cytoplasmic second messengers, such as in mammals." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

WIDE AND OLD. "Various forms of regulated programmed cell death have now been described in nine species of unicellular eukaryotes, belonging to four different branches whose phylogenic divergence is believed to range from around two to one billion years ago." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

EXTERNAL SIGNALS. "In all cases that have been studied to date, programmed cell death is regulated by signals provided by other cells, either in the form of cell-lineage information, of soluble mediators, or of cell-to-cell contacts." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn