Cells in Evolutionary Biology

This book summarizes the ways evolutionary theory has influenced the development of cell biology. Chapters explore Darwin’s use of cells in his theory of evolution. Weismann’s contrarian germ plasm theory will be assessed from several perspectives. The discovery of genes and the rise of genetics, the use of embryos for the identification of cell lineages, evidence of cytoplasmic inheritance in protozoans, and investigations of divergent nuclear control in prokaryotes and in eukaryotes provided new potential synergies between cell biology and evolutionary theory. The identification of cellular condensations as the modular basis of embryonic development returned cells to centre stage.

Brian Keith Hall FRSC (born, 1941) is the George S. Campbell Professor of Biology and University Research Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Professor Hall has researched and extensively written on bone and cartilage formation in developing vertebrate embryos. He is an active participant in the evolutionary developmental biology (EVO-DEVO) debate on the nature and mechanisms of animal body plan formation. Professor Hall has proposed that the neural crest tissue of vertebrates may be viewed as a fourth embryonic germ layer. As such, the neural crest - in Hall's view - plays a role equivalent to that of the endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm of bilaterian development and is a definitive feature of vertebrates (as hypothesized by Gans and Northcutt[1983]). As such, vertebrates are the only quadroblastic, rather than triploblastic bilaterian animals. In vertebrates the neural crest serves to integrate the somatic division (derived from ectoderm and mesoderm) and visceral division (derived from endoderm and mesoderm) together via a wide range novel vertebrate tissues (bone, cartilage, sympathetic nervous system, etc...). He has been associated with Dalhousie University since 1968. Since his retirement in 2007, he has been University Research Professor Emeritus and Emeritus Professor of Biology. (this taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_K._Hall ). Sally Moody is Professor of Anatomy and Regenerative Biology and a member of the GW Institute of Neurobiology at George Washington University. Dr. Moody's laboratory studies two aspects of neural developmental gene regulatory networks: (1) molecular mechanisms by which FoxD5, a forkhead/winged helix transcription factor, regulates other neural genes to control the transition from an immature to a pre-differentiation state in the neural plate; and (2) novel co-factors and down-stream targets of the Six1 transcription factor, a key regulatory gene that specifies placode-derived sensory structures of the vertebrate head. This information is being used to discover new genes involved in neural tube and craniofacial birth defects. See: http://www.gwumc.edu/smhs/facultydirectory/profile.cfm?empName=Sally%20Moody&FacID=2046862287