Stuart A. Newman

Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy; New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY

Stuart Newman received his early education in chemistry (Columbia University, A.B.) and chemical physics (University of Chicago, Ph.D.), which have informed his approach to developmental and evolutionary biology. He has proposed that genes act in the context of multicellular systems by mobilizing a variety of physical processes of the “middle” scale to generate forms of increasing complexity. These mesoscale physical processes, discovered throughout the 20th century and thus unknown to the formulators of the standard evolutionary narrative, cause early embryos and the primordia of organs to reorganize in sudden but predictable ways as the result of small changes in gene content or activity. Such physical processes are also sensitive to external factors, the effects of which can be incorporated into the developmental repertoire and propagated across generations.

These physico-genetic effects, demonstrable in the development of present-day organisms, were all the stronger in ancient forms, which had yet to experience the canalizing and stabilizing selection that have made embryogenesis a robust and largely fail-safe process. Therefore, rather than being gradualistic, unpredictable, and unaffected by causal factors other than genetic variation, morphological evolution, Newman has concluded, has been both saltational (occurring in jumps) and orthogenic (exhibiting recurrent, predictable morphological motifs), and bears the stamp of inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Developmental and Evolutionary Biology

The field of evolutionary biology arose from the desire to understand the origin and diversity of biological forms. In recent years, however, evolutionary genetics, with its focus on the modification and inheritance of presumed genetic programs, has all but overwhelmed other aspects of evolutionary biology. This has led to the neglect of the study of the generative origins of biological form.

Drawing on work from developmental biology, paleontology, developmental and population genetics, cancer research, physics, and theoretical biology, this book explores the multiple factors responsible for the origination of biological form. It examines the essential problems of morphological evolution—why, for example, the basic body plans of nearly all metazoans arose within a relatively short time span, why similar morphological design motifs appear in phylogenetically independent lineages, and how new structural elements are added to the body plan of a given phylogenetic lineage. It also examines discordances between genetic and phenotypic change, the physical determinants of morphogenesis, and the role of epigenetic processes in evolution. The book discusses these and other topics within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology, a new research agenda that concerns the interaction of development and evolution in the generation of biological form. By placing epigenetic processes, rather than gene sequence and gene expression changes, at the center of morphological origination, this book points the way to a more comprehensive theory of evolution.
Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo
During development cells and tissues undergo changes in pattern and form that employ a wider range of physical mechanisms than at any other time in an organism’s life. This book demonstrates how physics can be used to analyze these biological phenomena. Written to be accessible to both biologists and physicists, major stages and components of the biological development process are introduced and then analyzed from the viewpoint of physics. The presentation of physical models requires no mathematics beyond basic calculus.
- Demonstration of the power of a physics-based approach to the life sciences, accessible to both biologists and physicists
- Extensively illustrated in full-colour throughout
- Describes more than two dozen physical models of developmental biological processes
More books

Multiscale Modeling of Developmental Systems (Amazon link)

Selected publications

Newman, S. A., Bhat, R. (2011). Lamarck’s dangerous idea. In: “Transformations of Lamarckism: from subtle fluids to molecular biology” (S. Gissis, E. Jablonka, Eds.), pp. 157-169. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (link)

Newman, S. A. (2011). Animal egg as evolutionary innovation: a solution to the “embryonic hourglass” puzzle. J. Exp. Zool. B Mol. Dev. Evol. 316, 467-83. (PDF)

Newman, S. A. (2012). Physico-genetic determinants in the evolution of development. Science. 338, 217-9. (PDF)

Niklas, K. J., and Newman, S. A. (2013). The origins of multicellular organisms. Evol. Dev. 15, 41-52. (PDF)

Newman, S. A., and Linde-Medina, M. (2013). Physical determinants in the emergence and inheritance of multicellular form. Biological Theory 8, 274-285. (PDF)

Linde-Medina, M., Newman, S. A. (2014). Limb, tooth, beak: three modes of development and evolutionary innovation of form. J. Biosci. 39, 211-23.

Newman, S. A. (2014). Why are there eggs? Biochem Biophys Res Commun., in press.

Newman, S. A. (2014). Form and function remixed: developmental physiology in the evolution of vertebrate body plans. J. Physiol., in press.
Complete list of publications

For a complete list of publications, click here.

Stuart A. Newman

Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy; New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY

Quote

Books

Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Developmental and Evolutionary Biology

Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo

More books

Publications

Selected publications

Complete list of publications

Websites