Open AccessLung evolution as a cipher for physiology
Author(s) -
John S. Torday,
Virender K. Rehan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
physiological genomics/physiological genomics (print)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.078
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1531-2267
pISSN - 1094-8341
DOI - 10.1152/physiolgenomics.90411.2008
Subject(s) - biology , gene regulatory network , systems biology , biomedicine , computational biology , genomics , gene , zebrafish , genome , neuroscience , evolutionary biology , bioinformatics , genetics , gene expression
In the postgenomic era, we need an algorithm to readily translate genes into physiologic principles. The failure to advance biomedicine is due to the false hope raised in the wake of the Human Genome Project (HGP) by the promise of systems biology as a ready means of reconstructing physiology from genes. like the atom in physics, the cell, not the gene, is the smallest completely functional unit of biology. Trying to reassemble gene regulatory networks without accounting for this fundamental feature of evolution will result in a genomic atlas, but not an algorithm for functional genomics. For example, the evolution of the lung can be "deconvoluted" by applying cell-cell communication mechanisms to all aspects of lung biology development, homeostasis, and regeneration/repair. Gene regulatory networks common to these processes predict ontogeny, phylogeny, and the disease-related consequences of failed signaling. This algorithm elucidates characteristics of vertebrate physiology as a cascade of emergent and contingent cellular adaptational responses. By reducing complex physiological traits to gene regulatory networks and arranging them hierarchically in a self-organizing map, like the periodic table of elements in physics, the first principles of physiology will emerge.