What do you think about the balance between exploring widely different designs vs. local optimization at different levels of biology (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, anatomy, etc.)? Which levels are more or less modular or plastic?
In the endocrine system, for example, one feels that having tropic hormones (i.e., those controlling the release of other signaling hormones at other glands) may offer a finer and perhaps more robust regulation, compared to a being where all hormones were non-tropic. However, the anatomic location of elements in these networks is not trivial. For example, in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, renin is produced in the kidney, and aldosterone eventually exerts its effects in the kidney as well. However, the intermediate step by angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) mainly occurs in the lungs, which could introduce a delay in the regulation.
Do we have good explanations for the sites of production and action of different hormones in the body? Are there common principles to be learned as optimized by evolution in this respect? Or are happenstances/contingent evolution stronger determinants?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Kindly check http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/course/ecol/MetzMyli2008.pdf
Vincent I am not an expert in anything much, but do take an interest in a wide range of fields. That said, evolution must essentially a happenstance series of events. Yet at the same time when thinking about some successful complex conserved feature I find a useful question to be "What is this for?", because this functional perspective lets me think in simple terms where optimisation may aid our thinking? Two examples are ",What are brains for? "and "What is mTOR for"?
"Brains are prediction engines that continually make theories about our environment and accurately register whether an assumption is true or not"
Wang et al Neurological Clinic Ruhr-University Bochum via Science Daily 15-4-20.
I like Wang's definition as it seems to cover brains at all stages of evolution and it gives me ideas to work with.
I have not found a comparable answer to the mTOR question. It seems to me that mTOR is a mechanism which carries out all of the functions of life. The basic life force perhaps?
I note your wide range of interests and questions on this site and predisposition to take a mechanistic approach to our biology. I have similar interests.
Best Wishes Ron Horgan
Dear Vincent Blay ,
In the simplest case, an optimization problem consists of maximizing or minimizing a real function by systematically choosing input values from within an allowed set and computing the value of the function.
A circumstance especially that is due to chance They came together by mere happenstance.
http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/course/ecol/MetzMyli2008.pdf
Regards,
Shafagat
Visualizing any biological process as optimized invites teleological hypotheses and implies that there is some "goal" in the process. There is no evidence to support such a supposition. Evolution is a stochastic, contingent process and so the question needs to be reframed in order to avoid that logical flaw.
Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
Kindly check http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/course/ecol/MetzMyli2008.pdf
Chinaza Godswill Awuchi The references you supply seem to me to be work on models of evolution. One states that optimization would require simplified inputs.
Another that implies a degree of intention in the outcome which presupposes a process where optimization is possible.
I think that constructing a model of evolution may oversimplify a process of survival with many unknown variables.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biology