Are we nothing more than trillions of cells containing DNA or is there some hidden force that directs life? Professors Amy Shyer and Alan Rodrigues’s ground breaking research reveals how cells organize themselves thereby challenging reductionist and technocratic approaches to mainstream biology and our very understanding of life.
0:00:00 – 0:05:16 – Intro and Alan/Amy’s Bios
0:05:16 – 0:09:17 – How there is so much more to learn about life and health
0:09:17 – 00:14:19 – What is “Morphogenesis”, why does it matter?
00:14:19 – 0:20:40 – Observations that defy material explanation
0:20:40 – 0:23:44 – Materialism, controlling life, profit motives
0:23:44 – 0:30:58 – Alan and Amy’s research – seeing life as more than molecular machine
0:30:58 – 0:35:38 – Needing to consider how collections of cells relate to each other
0:35:40 – 0:38:30 – Leslie’s remedies versus high cost alternatives
0:38:30 – 0:42:21 – Movies of cellular ecology, self-organization
0:42:21 – 0:50:03 – Epigenetics – the key link between genes and environment
0:50:03 – 0:53:36 – Cellular ecology readouts to understand chronic disease
0:53:36 – 1:05:52 – Historical context behind the blind spots in biological thinking today
Amy on Twitter: https://x.com/AmyShyer
Alan on Substack: https://substack.com/@alanrrodrigues
Alan and Amy’s lab website: https://shyerrodrigueslab.com/
Alan Rodrigues and Amy Shyer are professors, co-founders and co-directors of the Laboratory of Morphogenesis. Their goal is to develop a scientific approach and understanding that does not reduce life science merely to applied genetics or biochemistry. They seek to understand aspects of living systems that have resisted the technocratic and reductionist approaches that have come to dominate mainstream biological science over the past century. By taking a holistic approach to fundamental questions such as how organs form in the embryo, they have uncovered under-appreciated epigenetic processes that they believe can be a valuable aid in gaining a clearer understanding of the roots of the chronic disease epidemic.
Alan received his BA in Chemistry at Williams College, an MPhil in Computational Biology at the University of Cambridge (as a Gates-Cambridge Scholar), and his PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology at Harvard University. Amy received her BS in Psychobiology at UCLA, her PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology at Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley as a Miller Fellow.
