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Told in their separate voices, sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy-tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek his freedom.

Developmental biology (including embryology) is proposed as \"the stem cell of biological disciplines.\" Genetics, cell biology, oncology, immunology, evolutionary mechanisms, neurobiology, and systems biology each has its ancestry in developmental biology. Moreover, developmental biology continues to roll on, budding off more disciplines, while retaining its own identity. While its descendant disciplines differentiate into sciences with a restricted set of paradigms, examples, and techniques, developmental biology remains vigorous, pluripotent, and relatively undifferentiated. In many disciplines, especially in evolutionary biology and oncology, the developmental perspective is being reasserted as an important research program.

In Dual Transformation, innovation and growth consultant Scott Anthony and his coauthors, Clark Gilbert and Mark Johnson, propose a practical and sustainable approach to one of the greatest challenges facing leaders today: transforming your business in the face of imminent disruption. Dual Transformation illustrates the inevitable rise and fall of companies in the age of technological change. But, more importantly, it shows you how your company can come out of a market shift stronger and more profitable. Anthony, Gilbert, and Johnson build upon the lessons of Xerox, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and a case study from Gilbert's first-hand experience transforming his own media and publishing company, to describe the process of successfully weathering the digital age by adapting a current business model to the new marketplace. The book offers critical insight to responding to disruptive shock with three value propositions: (A) repositioning today's business to maximize resilience, (B) creating a new growth engine, and (C) taking advantage of assets to result in creative new markets. With great change comes great opportunity, and this book will get you there with tools to reshape your business model.-- Provided by publisher

The notion of the “biological individual” is crucial to studies of genetics, immunology, evolution, development, anatomy, and physiology. Each of these biological subdisciplines has a specific conception of individuality, which has historically provided conceptual contexts for integrating newly acquired data. During the past decade, nucleic acid analysis, especially genomic sequencing and high-throughput RNA techniques, has challenged each of these disciplinary definitions by finding significant interactions of animals and plants with symbiotic microorganisms that disrupt the boundaries that heretofore had characterized the biological individual. Animals cannot be considered individuals by anatomical or physiological criteria because a diversity of symbionts are both present and functional in completing metabolic pathways and serving other physiological functions. Similarly, these new studies have shown that animal development is incomplete without symbionts. Symbionts also constitute a second mode of genetic inheritance, providing selectable genetic variation for natural selection. The immune system also develops, in part, in dialogue with symbionts and thereby functions as a mechanism for integrating microbes into the animal-cell community. Recognizing the “holobiont”—the multicellular eukaryote plus its colonies of persistent symbionts—as a critically important unit of anatomy, development, physiology, immunology, and evolution opens up new investigative avenues and conceptually challenges the ways in which the biological subdisciplines have heretofore characterized living entities.

Key Points Developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity contribute in numerous ways to animal evolution Symbionts help to generate organs and maintain species-specific interactions with their animal hosts. Symbionts provide selectable variation and can generate the conditions for reproductive isolation Symbionts may have promoted major evolutionary transitions such as multicellularity Plasticity allows the integration of the organism into its environment, changing development to account for predators, conspecifics, diet and temperature. Plasticity provides the raw material for genetic accommodation and niche construction. Plasticity can both help and harm populations experiencing stresses such as global climate change. Ecological evolutionary developmental biology (Eco-Evo-Devo) is a relatively new field that integrates developmental biology and ecology into evolutionary theory. The authors review new research in this field relating to the roles of developmental plasticity and developmental symbiosis in evolution. The integration of research from developmental biology and ecology into evolutionary theory has given rise to a relatively new field, ecological evolutionary developmental biology (Eco-Evo-Devo). This field integrates and organizes concepts such as developmental symbiosis, developmental plasticity, genetic accommodation, extragenic inheritance and niche construction. This Review highlights the roles that developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity have in evolution. Developmental symbiosis can generate particular organs, can produce selectable genetic variation for the entire animal, can provide mechanisms for reproductive isolation, and may have facilitated evolutionary transitions. Developmental plasticity is crucial for generating novel phenotypes, facilitating evolutionary transitions and altered ecosystem dynamics, and promoting adaptive variation through genetic accommodation and niche construction. In emphasizing such non-genomic mechanisms of selectable and heritable variation, Eco-Evo-Devo presents a new layer of evolutionary synthesis.

Patient-generated health data (PGHD), or health-related data gathered from patients to help address a health concern, are used increasingly in oncology to make regulatory decisions and evaluate quality of care. PGHD include self-reported health and treatment histories, patient-reported outcomes (PROs), and biometric sensor data. Advances in wireless technology, smartphones, and the Internet of Things have facilitated new ways to collect PGHD during clinic visits and in daily life. The goal of the current review was to provide an overview of the current clinical, regulatory, technological, and analytic landscape as it relates to PGHD in oncology research and care. The review begins with a rationale for PGHD as described by the US Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine, and other regulatory and scientific organizations. The evidence base for clinic-based and remote symptom monitoring using PGHD is described, with an emphasis on PROs. An overview is presented of current approaches to digital phenotyping or device-based, real-time assessment of biometric, behavioral, self-report, and performance data. Analytic opportunities regarding PGHD are envisioned in the context of big data and artificial intelligence in medicine. Finally, challenges and solutions for the integration of PGHD into clini-cal care are presented. The challenges include electronic medical record integration of PROs and biometric data, analysis of large and complex biometric data sets, and potential clinic workflow redesign. In addition, there is currently more limited evidence for the use of biometric data relative to PROs. Despite these challenges, the poten-tial benefits of PGHD make them increasingly likely to be integrated into oncology research and clinical care.

There is a pseudo‐embryology flourishing today, well nourished by popular science, religious ideologies, and the public media. Just as eugenics was a pseudoscience that influenced (and still influences) American popular culture and which was responsible for racist anti‐immigration laws (such as the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924), pseudo‐embryology is also influencing popular culture and legislation. This new pseudoscience promotes the belief that science supports current zygotic and fetal personhood movements as well as anti‐abortion legislation. However, what often passes for science are actually ideological myths, often grounded in and supporting male superiority. Indeed, the first myth of pseudo‐embryology is that fertilization is a masculine act that can be viewed as a classical hero narrative. The second myth is that fertilization is ensoulment, allowing it to displace the feminine act of birth as to when life begins. Here, DNA is seen to play the secular analogue of soul. The third myth is that the fetus in the womb is an independent autonomous entity and that birth merely moves the fetus from the womb to the outside world. This expresses the \"seed‐in‐the‐soil\" myth that was also prevalent in ancient cultures. In this manner, masculine stories of fertilization are valorized while feminine narratives of birth are suppressed. So when public narratives discuss what \"science\" says about when human life begins, we are not really discussing science. Rather, we are allowing our discussions to fall back into tenacious ancient misogynist myths that have nothing to do with the conclusions of modern developmental biology. Key points There is no consensus among biologists as to when personhood begins. Different biologists have proposed that personhood begins at such events as fertilization, gastrulation, the acquisition of an EEG pattern, and birth. Other scientists claim that the acquisition of personhood is gradual or that the question of personhood is not a biological one. The “science” debated in public discussions is not the set of conclusions based on biological research. Political discussions of reproduction are often based on false culturally‐based stories. Fertilization is falsely perceived as a race of sperm through a passive female, emphasizing male performance rather than interactions and mutual gamete maturation. The genome is falsely depicted as one's soul, promoting the idea that fertilization is ensoulment. Genetic determinism is often assumed, and plasticity ignored. The fetus is falsely depicted as a seed in nutritive soil, autonomous from the mother. The joint nature of maternal and fetal physiologies and anatomies are marginalized. The false narratives combine to form a “pseudo‐embryology” that influences our thoughts and laws.   

In the last two decades, the widespread application of genetic and genomic approaches has revealed a bacterial world astonishing in its ubiquity and diversity. This review examines how a growing knowledge of the vast range of animal–bacterial interactions, whether in shared ecosystems or intimate symbioses, is fundamentally altering our understanding of animal biology. Specifically, we highlight recent technological and intellectual advances that have changed our thinking about five questions: how have bacteria facilitated the origin and evolution of animals; how do animals and bacteria affect each other’s genomes; how does normal animal development depend on bacterial partners; how is homeostasis maintained between animals and their symbionts; and how can ecological approaches deepen our understanding of the multiple levels of animal–bacterial interaction. As answers to these fundamental questions emerge, all biologists will be challenged to broaden their appreciation of these interactions and to include investigations of the relationships between and among bacteria and their animal partners as we seek a better understanding of the natural world.

Organisms are now seen as holobionts, consortia of several species that interact metabolically such that they sustain and scaffold each other’s existence and propagation. Sympoiesis, the development of the symbiotic relationships that form holobionts, is critical for our understanding the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. Rather than being the read-out of a single genome, development has been found to be sympoietic, based on multigenomic interactions between zygote-derived cells and symbiotic microbes. These symbiotic and sympoietic interactions are predicated on the ability of cells from different kingdoms of life (e.g., bacteria and animals) to communicate with one another and to have their chemical signals interpreted in a manner that facilitates development. Sympoiesis, the creation of an entity by the interactions of other entities, is commonly seen in embryogenesis (e.g., the creation of lenses and retinas through the interaction of brain and epidermal compartments). In holobiont sympoiesis, interactions between partners of different domains of life interact to form organs and biofilms, wherein each of these domains acts as the environment for the other. If evolution is forged by changes in development, and if symbionts are routinely involved in our development, then changes in sympoiesis can constitute an important factor in evolution.