This conversation was led by Robert Perlman, Professor Emeritus of the Dept. of Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences at the University of Chicago, and Randolph Nesse, Research Professor of Life Sciences and Founding Director of the Center for Evolution & Medicine at Arizona State University. They led a discussion about how natural selection shaped the thousands of control systems that make life possible, how their failure modes can help us understand disease, and the evolutionary reasons why some are especially vulnerable to failure. The goal of the meeting was to create a community interested in developing work at this intersection, with examples presented of how we can study why some control systems are vulnerable to failure.
Resources discussed:
- Perlman 2019, “An evolutionary view of homeostasis: bioenergetics, life history theory, and responses to pregnancy”
- Nesse 2021, “Evolutionary medicine needs engineering expertise”
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.