Biology

Our knowledge of living organisms is still very limited, with less than 20% of the world’s species known to date. It is therefore essential to increase our efforts to inventory biodiversity. This is the goal of scientific research, but it is also a vital... (Read more)

Symmetry and the causes of shifts in different types of symmetries in flowers follow specific patterns that are ruled by developmental and genetic factors. Using a unified system of phyllotaxic equations, we have modeled the molecular mechanisms and pre... (Read more)

Behind the neologism “ribozymes” lies a family of fascinating molecules, ribo-enzymes, which have been relatively little studied. These catalytically active RNAs are found in all strata of life, from viruses to the human genome. At the end of the 19... (Read more)

Research in biology and all basic sciences has undergone profound transformations in recent decades. We have seen the development of extremely sophisticated techniques, allowing us to study, in an objective manner, questions that were still considered scie... (Read more)

This book provides a comprehensive review of the history of concepts of the endocrine, nervous and immune systems throughout the last century. Historically, these systems were long considered as compartments that performed separate and different functio... (Read more)

Since ancient times, asymptomatic bone variations have been studied in many different disciplines. In radiology, for example, they enable the differentiation of the typical from the anomalous, but in biological anthropology they are especially useful in an... (Read more)

The equations of phyllotaxis were discovered by Douady and Couder: these describe the inhibition “force” generated by an incipient primordium, preventing the initiation of other primordia in its vicinity: the method that was lacking was to take into ac... (Read more)

One family of viruses is responsible for the infection of many species of vertebrates. These are the retroviruses whose genomic RNA is used to support genetic information and ensures many essential functions that are required for the formation of an infect... (Read more)

The future of the human posture is in the spotlight. The 200-year-old locomotion paradigm can no longer resist the advancement of knowledge, yet 2,500 years of thinking on the place of verticalized human anatomy and its reflexive consciousness in the natur... (Read more)

Natural history collections have recently acquired an unprecedented place of importance in scientific research. Originally created in the context of systematics and taxonomy, they are now proving to be fundamental for answering various scientific and socie... (Read more)

The future of the human posture is in the spotlight. The 200-year-old locomotion paradigm can no longer resist the advancement of knowledge, yet 2,500 years of thinking on the place of verticalized human anatomy and its reflexive consciousness in the natur... (Read more)

The sub-Antarctic islands are remote and isolated environments with original flora and fauna composed of a few species that are highly adapted to cold oceanic conditions. Their peculiar naturalness makes these ecosystems intrinsically fragile. This book... (Read more)

This book forms part of the set, Comparative Anatomy and Posture of Animal and Human, and focuses on the skulls of Quaternary mammals and of Man since the acquisition of upright posture. Although the vast majority of the quadruped fossil species have a ... (Read more)

Life has countless facets that are taken into account by the concept of biological diversity (biodiversity). Focusing only on those general mechanisms or processes, common to a large number of species, conveys reductionist thinking and makes it impossible ... (Read more)

One of the essential characteristics of living beings is the explosion of variety in their forms that is intrinsically linked to the diversity of the environments they have adapted to. This book, the result of collaboration between international special... (Read more)

Viruses interact with all forms of life and have shaped evolution for 4 billion years. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of conducting scientific research into viruses to understand the interactions between them and their hosts. Virology i... (Read more)

This book presents the different models of terrestrial bipedalism, from the most distant – that of the dinosaurs – to the closest – that of the great apes. Comparative biomechanical analysis allows us to identify the functional characteristics of ... (Read more)

As genetics becomes increasingly important in our everyday environment, misinterpretation of its scientific foundation leads to mixed feelings of hope and fear about the potential of its applications. Trajectories of Genetics uncovers the many facets of... (Read more)

Often taken for granted, the sense of smell has seldom been discussed or understood. However, since the start of the 20th Century, studies in this area have grown exponentially and today there is a greater understanding of the olfactory system – at both ... (Read more)

Based on the growth of living organisms such as unicellular algae, filamentous fungi and neurons, the author’s collaboration with physicists, numerical analysts and biologists has made it possible, after 30 years, to establish the physicochemical theory ... (Read more)

Innate immunity is a new branch of immunology, confirmed by three Nobel Prize winners in 2011. It is the first line of defense against pathogens and is in a way the preliminary step of adaptive immunity which occurs later, and only present in vertebrates. ... (Read more)

To formalize the dynamics of living things is to search for invariants in a system that contains an irreducible aspect of “fuzziness”, because biological processes are characterized by their large statistical variability, and strong dependence on tempo... (Read more)

Evolution continually shapes the world around us. The living world is reproducing and transmitting traits from ancestors to descendants, yet at the same time it is always changing. This book examines this duality of biodiversity, its past and its future wi... (Read more)

The dark side of the genome represents vast domains of the genome that are not encoding for proteins – the basic bricks of cellular structure and metabolism. Up to 98% of the human genome is non-coding and produces so-called long non-coding RNA. Some of ... (Read more)