学术报告
报告题目：From the cell to cancer
报告人1：Carlos Sonnenschein, MD
(Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, Tufts University School of Medicine,Boston)
报告时间：2014年4月21日（星期一）下午13:00-13:50
地点：北京大学定量生物学中心老化学楼东配楼102会议室（理教路西/光华楼北侧）
摘要：Dr. Sonnenschein and Dr. Soto co-authored a book entitled THE SOCIETYOF CELLS (Bios-Springer-Verlag) in which they critically evaluated the status ofresearch in the fields of control of cell proliferation and carcinogenesis. Themajor contributions discussed in the book were that a) the default state of allcells in both unicellular and multicellular organisms is proliferation, and thatb) the so-called sporadic cancers (over 95% of all clinical cases) representdiseases specifically anchored at the tissue level of biological organization.These postulates are at the core of their theory of carcinogenesis andmetastases, that is, the tissue organization field theory (TOFT).
An almost universally held dogma is that somatic mutation is thecause of this malady of cellular proliferation. However, if cellularproliferation is the default state of all cells, a state that is constrained inmulticellular animals by factors or conditions in the cellular environment, itfollows that cancer is the result of a failure of these constraints rather thanof mutations of oncogenes or tumor-suppressor genes. Put another way, cancerresults from a breakdown of tissue organization that disrupts the normalinhibitions of proliferation that are inherent in the tissue architecture of amulticellular society of cells.
报告题目：Toward a theory of organisms
报告人2：Ana Soto, MD
(Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, Tufts University School of Medicine,Boston Blaise Pascal Chair of Biology 2013, Ecole Normale Superieure, ParisFrance)
报告时间：2014年4月21日（星期一）下午14:00-14:50
地点：北京大学定量生物学中心老化学楼东配楼102会议室（理教路西/光华楼北侧）
摘要：
The theory of evolution has provided an increasingly adequateexplanation of phylogeny. However, biologists have yet to generate a theory oforganisms that would encompass ontogeny and life cycles, and thus phenomena onthe time-scale from conception to death.
We propose that theoretical extensions of physics are required inorder to grasp the living state of matter that will help to describe the properbiological observables, i.e. the phenotypes. Biological entities must alsofollow the underlying principles that we use to understand the inert matter.However, these physical laws and principles may not suffice to make thebiological dynamics intelligible at the phenotypic level. Like Galileo, whoproposed a principle of inertia as default state in mechanics, we have proposedtwo aspects of the default state inbiology, and a framing principle, namely: i) Default state: cell proliferation with variation as a constitutiveproperty of the living. Variation is generated by the mere fact that celldivision generates two overall similar, but not identical cells. ii) Default state: motility, whichencompasses cell and organismic movements as well as movement within cells. iii)Framing principle: life phenomena are never identical iterations of amorphogenetic process. Organisms are the consequence of the inherent variabilitygenerated by proliferation, motility and auto-organization which operate withinthe framing principle. From these basicpremises, we will elaborate on the generation of robustness, the structure ofdetermination, and the identification of biological properobservables.
主持人：白书农教授
