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Stefan Manolache, Dr. Hajk-Georg Drost (University of Dundee, Dundee, UK)
The Waddington Epigenetic Landscape is a conceptual model that illustrates how gene regulation shapes cell fate decisions during development. We invite the reader to imagine how this landscape was progressively terraformed as we evolved from single-celled ancestors to complex multicellular organisms. We can try to reconstruct this history at the genome level, tracing back gene origination events via a method known as phylostratigraphy. If genes sculpt the developmental landscape through their interactions, can their evolutionary history help describe its present form? Might this, in turn, offer a more refined understanding of cell identity and its susceptibility to perturbations?