Code Biology

Marcello Barbieri (born 1940) is professor of embryology at the University of Ferrara, Italy. He has conducted research on embryonic development and ribosome crystallization at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA, and the Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik in Berlin. He has published books on embryology and evolution, and has taught biophysics, molecular embryology and theoretical biology respectively at the Universities of Bologna, Sassari and Turin. His research interests include embryology, evolution and biosemiotics. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biosemiotics, was a co-Editor of the Springer Book Series in Biosemiotics.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductory Chapter.- The Life and Education of Jakob von Uexküll. The Basis of the Environmental Theory.- The Subjective World of the Umwelt.- The Structure of the Umwelt.- Environment and Meaning.- Influences and Interpretations of the Work of Uexküll.- Conclusion. References.- Index.

"Barbieri (embryology, Univ. of Ferrara, Italy) lays out the case for multiple codes, each corresponding with, and instrumental in the origin of, different levels of biological organization: from the origin of life (genetic), the three kingdoms of life (signal transduction), the nucleus (splicing code), regulation of eukaryotic genomes (histone code), cell division (the cytoskeletal code), to mind and language (the organic code). ... Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers/faculty." (B. K. Hall, Choice, Vol. 53 (1), September, 2015)