This book sheds light on how the abundance of epigenetic regulations, RNA group interactions, the role of viruses and related infectious agents in cellular host organisms drive evolutionary processes. Rather than presenting a final Integrative Theory of Evolution, this book assembles aspects and insights from leading experts that must be incorporated into such a theory in order to better integrate current empirical knowledge than is achieved by models that still insist on the crucial role of replication errors as the main reason for genetic variability.
Since nearly a century the key narrative in evolutionary biology is founded on two principles: evolutionary relevant genetic variations are the result of error replication events (mutation) and natural selection. With the comeback of virology the role of viruses in the evolution of life lead to change our view on (a) how evolutionary relevant variations occur, (b) viruses as exclusively disease causing genetic parasites, (c) the definition of life itself. Empirical data of the last decades demonstrate that most viruses do not harm the host but settle host in a persistent way, remaining as exapted RNA networks known as mobile genetic elements and a variety of non-coding RNAs being essential in host gene regulations such as transcription, translation, immunity, repair and epigenetic (re)programming. Epigenetic programming determines each cell of every organism across all domains of life through epigenetic markings. If learned behaviors can be epigenetically inherited and lead to organisms that are better adapted, the error-replication (mutation) narrative is insufficiently complex to integrate this.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. A Brief Look at the Biological Theory of Evolution: What Determines How Life Changes Itself?- Chapter 2. DNA Methylation and Evolution.- Chapter 3. Developmental Dynamics: Shaping the Pathways of Evolution.- Chapter 4. Modular Complementarity as an Evolutionary Organizer: Beyond Base Pairing.- Chapter 5. Transposons, Stress and the Evolution of Adaptability.- Chapter 6. Transgenerational programming of brain development and behaviour in response to early life adversity.- Chapter 7. Maternal transmission of atopic disease susceptibility.- Chapter 8. Small RNA inheritance in Caenorhabditis elegans: phenomenology, constraints, and evolutionary logic.- Chapter 9. Transposable elements in Evolution: our 'frenemy' within.- Chapter 10. Defense and Immune Systems Evolving from Coopted Selfish Genetic Elements – From the Origin of Life to the Present.- Chapter 11. Non-Mendelian inheritance and evolution in ciliates with a focus on transposons.- Chapter 12. Structural Neutrality and Accommodation Shape RNA Evolution.- Chapter 13. RNA dynamics in the evolution of RNA function.- Chapter 14. 'Location, Location, Location' – Cis-acting antisense transcripts in evolution and disease.- Chapter 15. System-Evolutionary View of RNA Presence in Living Cells .- Chapter 16. Archaeology as a toolkit for mRNA: history and meaning in use.- Chapter 17. The proteomic and coevolutionary roots of the genetic code.- Chapter 18. Inteins – emerging regulatory roles and their exaptation for hedgehog signaling.- Chapter 19. Opinion: of RNA, virus and groups.- Chapter 20. The Viral Turn in Biology.- Chapter 21. Viral quasispecies as models of biological complexity. New findings with SARS-CoV-2.- Chapter 22. Wholobionts and Viruses.- Chapter 23. A hypercycle for ribozymes or viroids as origin of life.- Chapter 24. Minimal RNA replicons in the origin and evolution of life.- Chapter 25. The Many Shades of Compartmentalization in Prebiotic Evolution.- Chapter 26. The challenge of scale in molecular adaptation: Local searches in astronomical genotype networks.- Chapter 27. Nongenetic mechanisms of animal evolution.- Chapter 28. Biological Senomic Thermodynamics in Evolution of Life on Earth.
About the Author :
Guenther Witzany developed a new philosophy of biology. His theory of biocommunication and Natural Genome Editing is the first theory that integrates all domains of life empirically in a non-reductionistic and non-mechanistic way, proving in all domains that every coordination within and between cells, tissues, organs and organisms depends on successful communication processes. Additionally Natural Genome Editing demonstrates that the genetic code is a natural language-like text that is edited by competent agents that infect, compete and cooperate within host genomes. These agents are viruses and related parasites which remain persistently as mobile genetic elements and RNA-networks that serve as essential tools in all regulatory processes of cells. 1983 Doctor of Philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (Germany). First concept of a Theory of Communicative Nature in 1986 which he further developed into the Theory of Biocommunication and Natural Genome Editing in 2006. Adaptation to all domains of Life in a series of books he edited between 2010 und 2026 (bacteria, archaea, viruses, phages, ciliates, plants, fungi, animals, epigenetics, evolutionary theory). Organizer of various meetings between 2008 and 2022 on natural genome editing, viruses, RNA networks, evolution and epigenetics with leading experts in their fields. The Proceedings he edited where all published at the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
