Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations

BarkBase: Epigenomic annotation of canine genomes

Dogs are an unparalleled natural model for investigating the genetics of health and disease, particularly for complex diseases like cancer. Comprehensive genomic annotation of regulatory elements active in healthy canine tissues is crucial both for identifying candidate causal variants and for designing functional studies needed to translate genetic associations into disease insight. Currently, canine geneticists rely primarily on annotations of the human or mouse genome that have been remapped to dog, an approach that misses dog-specific features. Here, we describe BarkBase, a canine epigenomic resource available at barkbase.org. BarkBase hosts data for 27 adult tissue types, with biological replicates, and for one sample of up to five tissues sampled at each of four carefully staged embryonic time points. RNA sequencing is complemented with whole genome sequencing and with assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (ATAC-seq), which identifies open chromatin regions. By including replicates, we can more confidently discern tissue-specific transcripts and assess differential gene expression between tissues and timepoints. By offering data in easy-to-use file formats, through a visual browser modeled on similar genomic resources for human, BarkBase introduces a powerful new resource to support comparative studies in dogs and humans