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The Cell as the First Niche Construction
Niche construction nominally describes how organisms can form their own environments, increasing their capacity to adapt to their surroundings. It is hypothesized that the formation of the first cell as ‘internal’ Niche Construction was the foundation for life, and that subsequent niche construction...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2016
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929533/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27136594 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biology5020019 |
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author | Torday, John S. |
author_facet | Torday, John S. |
author_sort | Torday, John S. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Niche construction nominally describes how organisms can form their own environments, increasing their capacity to adapt to their surroundings. It is hypothesized that the formation of the first cell as ‘internal’ Niche Construction was the foundation for life, and that subsequent niche constructions were iterative exaptations of that event. The first instantation of niche construction has been faithfully adhered to by returning to the unicellular state, suggesting that the life cycle is zygote to zygote, not adult to adult as is commonly held. The consequent interactions between niche construction and epigenetic inheritance provide a highly robust, interactive, mechanistic way of thinking about evolution being determined by initial conditions rather than merely by chance mutation and selection. This novel perspective offers an opportunity to reappraise the processes involved in evolution mechanistically, allowing for scientifically testable hypotheses rather than relying on metaphors, dogma, teleology and tautology. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4929533 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49295332016-07-07 The Cell as the First Niche Construction Torday, John S. Biology (Basel) Commentary Niche construction nominally describes how organisms can form their own environments, increasing their capacity to adapt to their surroundings. It is hypothesized that the formation of the first cell as ‘internal’ Niche Construction was the foundation for life, and that subsequent niche constructions were iterative exaptations of that event. The first instantation of niche construction has been faithfully adhered to by returning to the unicellular state, suggesting that the life cycle is zygote to zygote, not adult to adult as is commonly held. The consequent interactions between niche construction and epigenetic inheritance provide a highly robust, interactive, mechanistic way of thinking about evolution being determined by initial conditions rather than merely by chance mutation and selection. This novel perspective offers an opportunity to reappraise the processes involved in evolution mechanistically, allowing for scientifically testable hypotheses rather than relying on metaphors, dogma, teleology and tautology. MDPI 2016-04-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4929533/ /pubmed/27136594 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biology5020019 Text en © 2016 by the author; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Commentary Torday, John S. The Cell as the First Niche Construction |
title | The Cell as the First Niche Construction |
title_full | The Cell as the First Niche Construction |
title_fullStr | The Cell as the First Niche Construction |
title_full_unstemmed | The Cell as the First Niche Construction |
title_short | The Cell as the First Niche Construction |
title_sort | cell as the first niche construction |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929533/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27136594 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biology5020019 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT tordayjohns thecellasthefirstnicheconstruction AT tordayjohns cellasthefirstnicheconstruction |