''Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Developmental and Evolutionary Biology'' is an anthology published in 2003 edited by Gerd B. Müller and Stuart A. Newman. The book is the outcome of the 4th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology on "Origins of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene Paradigm", hosted in 1999 at the

Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research The Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) is an international center for advanced studies in the life and sustainability sciences. It is a "Home to Theory that Matters" that supports the articulation, analysis, and int ...

. It has been cited over 200 times and has a major influence on

extended evolutionary synthesis The extended evolutionary synthesis consists of a set of theoretical concepts argued to be more comprehensive than the earlier modern synthesis of evolutionary biology that took place between 1918 and 1942. The extended evolutionary synthesis was ...

research.

Description of the book

The book explores the multiple factors that may have been responsible for the origination of

biological Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...

form in

multicellular A multicellular organism is an organism that consists of more than one cell, in contrast to unicellular organism. All species of animals, land plants and most fungi are multicellular, as are many algae, whereas a few organisms are partially uni- ...

life. These biological forms include

limb Limb may refer to: Science and technology *Limb (anatomy), an appendage of a human or animal *Limb, a large or main branch of a tree *Limb, in astronomy, the curved edge of the apparent disk of a celestial body, e.g. lunar limb *Limb, in botany, ...

s, segmented structures, and different body symmetries. It explores why the basic body plans of nearly all multicellular life arose in the relatively short time span of the

Cambrian Explosion The Cambrian explosion, Cambrian radiation, Cambrian diversification, or the Biological Big Bang refers to an interval of time approximately in the Cambrian Period when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil recor ...

. The authors focus on physical factors (

structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...

) other than changes in an organism's

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...

that may have caused multicellular life to form new structures. These physical factors include differential adhesion of cells and feedback oscillations between cells. The book also presents recent experimental results that examine how the same embryonic tissues or

tumor cells A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...

can be coaxed into forming dramatically different structures under different environmental conditions. One of the goals of the book is to stimulate research that may lead to a more comprehensive

theory of evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation t ...

. It is frequently cited as foundational to the development of the

List of contributions

# ''Origination of Organismal Form: The Forgotten Cause in Evolutionary Theory'', Gerd B. Müller and Stuart A. Newman # ''The Cambrian "Explosion" of Metazoans'',

Simon Conway Morris Simon Conway Morris (born 1951) is an English palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and astrobiologist known for his study of the fossils of the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian explosion. The results of these discoveries were celebrated in ...

# ''Convergence and Homoplasy in the Evolution of Organismal Form'', Pat Willmer # ''Homology:The Evolution of Morphological Organization'', Gerd B. Müller # ''Only Details Determine'', Roy J. Britten # ''The Reactive Genome'', Scott F. Gilbert # ''Tissue Specificity: Structural Cues Allow Diverse Phenotypes from a Constant Genotype'', Mina J. Bissell, I. Saira Mian, Derek Radisky and Eva Turley # ''Genes, Cell Behavior, and the Evolution of Form'', Ellen Larsen # ''Cell Adhesive Interactions and Tissue Self-Organization'', Malcolm Steinberg # ''Gradients, Diffusion, and Genes in Pattern Formation'', H. Frederik Nijhout # ''A Biochemical Oscillator Linked to Vertebrate Segmentation'', Olivier Pourquié # ''Organization through Intra-Inter Dynamics'', Kunihiko Kaneko # ''From Physics to Development: The Evolution of Morphogenetic Mechanisms'', Stuart A. Newman # ''Phenotypic Plasticity and Evolution by Genetic Assimilation'', Vidyanand Nanjundiah # ''Genetic and Epigenetic Factors in the Origin of the Tetrapod Limb'',

Günter P. Wagner Günter P. Wagner (born May 28, 1954 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-born evolutionary biologist who is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary biology at Yale University, and head of the Wagner Lab. Education and training After undergraduate e ...

and Chi-hua Chiu # ''Epigenesis and Evolution of Brains: From Embryonic Divisions to Functional Systems'',

Georg F. Striedter Georg F. Striedter is an American scientist and professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of more than 30 papers in evolutionary neuroscience and the author of the book ''Prin ...

# ''Boundary Constraints for the Emergence of Form'', Diego Rasskin-Gutman

References

{{reflist 2003 non-fiction books Biology books Books about evolution Extended evolutionary synthesis Developmental biology Evolutionary developmental biology