Acta Biotheoretica最新文献

Plants are capable of a range of complex interactions with the environment. Over the last decade, some authors have used this as evidence to argue that plants are cognitive agents. While there is no consensus on this view, it is certainly interesting to approach the debate from a comparative perspective, trying to understand whether different lineages of plants show different degrees of responsiveness to environmental cues, and how their responses compare with those of animals or humans. In this paper, I suggest that a potentially fruitful approach to these comparative studies is provided by automata theory. Accordingly, I shall present a possible application of this theory to plant communication. Two tentative results will emerge. First, that different lineages may exhibit different levels of complexity in response to similar stimuli. Second, that current evidence does not allow to infer great cognitive sophistication in plants.

In angiosperms cytoplasmic DNA is typically passed on maternally through ovules. Genes in the mtDNA may cause male sterility. When male-sterile (female) cytotypes produce more seeds than cosexuals, they pass on more copies of their mtDNA and will co-occur with cosexuals with a neutral cytotype. Cytoplasmic gynodioecy is a well-known phenomenon in angiosperms, both in wild and crop plants. In some conifer families (e.g. Pinaceae) mitochondria are also maternally inherited. However in some other families (e.g. Taxaceae and Cupressaceae) mtDNA is paternally inherited through the pollen. With paternal mtDNA inheritance, male cytotypes that produce more pollen than cosexuals are expected to co-occur with cosexuals. This is uncharted territory. An ESS model shows that the presence of male cytotypes selects for more female allocation in the cosexual, i.e. for sexual specialisation. An allele that switches sex from male to female can then invade. This leads to rapid loss of the neutral cytotype of the cosexual, fixation of the male cytotype and dioecy with 50% males and 50% females. The models suggest that paternal inheritance of mtDNA facilitates the evolution dioecy. Consistent with this hypothesis the Pinaceae are 100% monoecious, while dioecy is common in the Taxaceae family and in the genus Juniperus (Cupressaceae). However, no reliable data are yet available on both mode of inheritance of mtDNA and gender variation of the same species. When cosexuals benefit from reproductive assurance (high selfing rate, low inbreeding depression, low fertilisation) they maintain themselves next to males and females. This predicted pattern with three sex types present in the same population is observed in conifers in nature.

The Y chromosome in the XY sex-determination system is often shorter than its X counterpart, a condition attributed to degeneration after Y recombination ceases. Contrary to the traditional view of continuous, gradual degeneration, our study reveals stabilization within large mating populations. In these populations, we demonstrate that both mutant and active alleles on the Y chromosome can reach equilibrium through a mutation-selection balance. However, the emergence of a new species, particularly through the founder effect, can disrupt this equilibrium. Specifically, if the male founders of a new species carry only a mutant allele for a particular Y-linked gene, this allele becomes fixed, leading to the loss of the corresponding active gene on the Y chromosome. Our findings suggest that the rate of Y-chromosome degeneration may be linked to the frequency of speciation events associated with single-male founder events.

The etiological account of teleological function is beset by several difficulties, which I propose to solve by grafting onto the etiological theory a subordinated goal-contribution clause. This approach enables us to ascribe neither too many teleofunctions nor too few; to give a unitary, one-clause analysis that works just as well for teleological functions derived from Darwinian evolution, as for those derived from human intention; and finally, to save the etiological theory from falsification, by explaining how, in spite of appearances, the theory can allow for evolutionary function loss.

Biological individuality is without a doubt a key concept in philosophy of biology. Questions around the individuality of organisms, species, and biological systems can be traced throughout the philosophy of biology since the discipline’s inception, not to mention the sustained attention they have received in biology and philosophy more broadly. It’s high time the topic got its own Cambridge Element. McConwell’s Biological Individuality falls short of an authoritative overview of the debate on biological individuality. However, it sends a welcome message to new and seasoned scholars to reorient the debate towards practically and politically relevant themes.

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive.

The calcium signals regulate the production and secretion of many signaling molecules like inositol trisphosphate ((IP_{3})) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in various cells including pancreatic (beta)-cells. The calcium signaling mechanisms regulating (IP_{3}), ATP and insulin responsible for various functions of (beta)-cells are still not well understood. Any disturbance in these mechanisms can alter the functions of (beta)-cells leading to diabetes and metabolic disorders. Therefore, a mathematical model is proposed by incorporating the reaction-diffusion equation for calcium dynamics and a system of first-order differential equations for (IP_{3}), ATP-production and insulin secretion with initial and boundary conditions. The model incorporates the temporal dependence of (IP_{3})-production and degradation, ATP production and insulin secretion on calcium dynamics in a (beta)-cell. The piecewise linear finite element method has been used for the spatial dimension and the Crank-Nicolson scheme for the temporal dimension to obtain numerical results. The effect of changes in source influxes and buffers on calcium dynamics and production of (IP_{3}), ATP and insulin levels in a (beta)-cell has been analyzed. It is concluded that the dysfunction of source influx and buffers can cause significant variations in calcium levels and dysregulation of (IP_{3}), ATP and insulin production, which can lead to various metabolic disorders, diabetes, obesity, etc. The proposed model provides crucial information about the changes in mechanisms of calcium dynamics causing proportionate disturbances in (IP_3), ATP and insulin levels in pancreatic cells, which can be helpful for devising protocols for diagnosis and treatment of various metabolic diseases.

This paper focuses on physiological integration in multicellular systems, a notion often associated with biological individuality, but which has not received enough attention and needs a thorough theoretical treatment. Broadly speaking, physiological integration consists in how different components come together into a cohesive unit in which they are dependent on one another for their existence and activity. This paper argues that physiological integration can be understood by considering how the components of a biological multicellular system are controlled and coordinated in such a way that their activities can contribute to the maintenance of the system. The main implication of this perspective is that different ways of controlling their parts may give rise to multicellular organizations with different degrees of integration. After defining control, this paper analyses how control is realized in two examples of multicellular systems located at different ends of the spectrum of multicellularity: biofilms and animals. It focuses on differences in control ranges, and it argues that a high degree of integration implies control exerted at both medium and long ranges, and that insofar as biofilms lack long-range control (relative to their size) they can be considered as less integrated than other multicellular systems. It then discusses the implication of this account for the debate on physiological individuality and the idea that degrees of physiological integration imply degrees of individuality.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of water stress on plants production. We propose a mathematical model for the dynamics growth of plants that takes into account the concentration of available water in the soil, water stress, plant production and plants compensation. Sensitivity analysis of the model has been performed in order to determine the impact of related parameters on the dynamics growth of plants. We present the theoretical analysis of the model with and without water stress. More precisely, we show that the full model is well-posedness. For each model, we compute the trivial equilibria and derive two thresholds parameters that determine the outcome of water stress within a plantation. Further, we perform numerical simulation on the case of banana-plantain simulations to support the theory. We found that the Hopf bifurcation occurs for a specific value of the water absorption rate of unstressed plants. The impact of the water stress on the banana-plantain production is also numerically investigated. After, the role of the water stress on the plant production is numerically investigated. We found that the water stress can cause about 68.16% of loss of banana-plantain production within a plantation with 1600 rejets initially planted. This suggests that climate change plays a detrimental role on banana-plantains production.

The central dogma of molecular biology dictates that, with only a few exceptions, information proceeds from DNA to protein through an RNA intermediate. Examining the enigmatic steps from prebiotic to biological chemistry, we take another road suggesting that primordial peptides acted as template for the self-assembly of the first nucleic acids polymers. Arguing in favour of a sort of archaic “reverse translation” from proteins to RNA, our basic premise is a Hadean Earth where key biomolecules such as amino acids, polypeptides, purines, pyrimidines, nucleosides and nucleotides were available under different prebiotically plausible conditions, including meteorites delivery, shallow ponds and hydrothermal vents scenarios. Supporting a protein-first scenario alternative to the RNA world hypothesis, we propose the primeval occurrence of short two-dimensional peptides termed “selective amino acid- and nucleotide-matching oligopeptides” (henceforward SANMAOs) that noncovalently bind at the same time the polymerized amino acids and the single nucleotides dispersed in the prebiotic milieu. In this theoretical paper, we describe the chemical features of this hypothetical oligopeptide, its biological plausibility and its virtues from an evolutionary perspective. We provide a theoretical example of SANMAO’s selective pairing between amino acids and nucleosides, simulating a poly-Glycine peptide that acts as a template to build a purinic chain corresponding to the glycine’s extant triplet codon GGG. Further, we discuss how SANMAO might have endorsed the formation of low-fidelity RNA’s polymerized strains, well before the appearance of the accurate genetic material’s transmission ensured by the current translation apparatus.