Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 113 (2013) 355

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Foreword

Systems biology and reproduction Readers of this journal will know that for over decade now many of the focussed issues have been devoted to systems biology, computational biology, biological mathematics, the Physiome and Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) projects. The reason is that these are areas where biophysics and molecular biology meet in some very ambitious projects. Systems biology is putting parts of organisms together (integration) which is necessary to complement the reductive discipline of molecular biology, which drills down to the smallest (i.e. molecular) elements in biological systems. The present issue extends this series into a new area, that of reproduction. This field is of central importance since reproduction is the mechanism by which inheritable characteristics are transferred from one generation to the next. Evolution is precisely the variations over time in these characteristics. Moreover there is considerable debate now on the precise mechanisms by which that process occurs (Noble, 2011, 2013). The titles of those articles reflect equally strong titles of recently published articles in major scientific journals, including Nature (Ball, 2013) and PNAS (Mattick, 2012). It was also prompted by important books that have appeared recently (Beurton et al., 2008; Gissis and Jablonka, 2011; Margulis and Sagan, 2003; Pigliucci and Müller, 2010; Shapiro, 2011). Those books also propose either significant extensions of existing evolutionary theory or the replacement of the Modern Synthesis by a new synthesis. As the chief editor responsible for having commissioned this focussed issue on Systems Biology and Reproduction I am delighted with the outcome, which contains a seminal collection

0079-6107/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2013.11.004

of articles in this field. For technical production reasons not all the articles commissioned and accepted could be fitted in this volume. We will therefore be publishing two articles in a future volume, where I will highlight their importance in relation to this volume. References Ball, P., 2013. DNA: celebrate the unknowns. Nature 496, 419e420. Beurton, P.J., Falk, R., Rheinberger, H.-J., 2008. The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution: Historical and Epistemological Perspectives. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gissis, S.B., Jablonka, E., 2011. Transformations of Lamarckism. From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology. In: Gissis, S.B., Jablonka, E. (Eds.), Book Transformations of Lamarckism. From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology. MIT Press, City. Margulis, L., Sagan, D., 2003. Acquiring Genomes: a Theory of the Origins of Species Basic Books. Mattick, J.S., 2012. Rocking the foundations of molecular genetics. Proc. Natl. Acad. of Sci. 109, 16400e16401. Noble, D., 2011. Neo-Darwinism, the modern synthesis, and selfish genes: are they of use in physiology? J. Physiol. 589, 1007e1015. Noble, D., 2013. Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology. Exp. Physiol. 98, 1235e1243. Pigliucci, M., Müller, G.B., 2010. Evolution e the Extended Synthesis. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Shapiro, J.A., 2011. Evolution: a View From the 21st Century. Pearson Education Inc, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Denis Noble E-mail address: [email protected].

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