Abstract
Development and evolution are dynamical processes under the continuous control of organismal and environmental factors. Generic physical processes associated with biological materials and to certain genes and molecules provide a morphological template for the Evo-Devo of organism forms. Generic dynamical behaviors provide a temporal template for biological regulation and coordination. The role of generic physical processes and their associated molecules in development is the topic of the Dynamical Patterning Module (DPM) framework. The role of generic dynamical behaviors (realized by “network motifs”) in biological regulation is the topic of Systems Biology (SB). We focus on a multicellular aggregative bacteria, Myxococcus xanthus, to pursue a joint DPM-SB perspective on the transition to multicellularity. Understanding M. xanthus development as a dynamical process embedded in a physical substrate provides novel insights on the interaction between developmental regulatory networks and generic physical processes in the evolutionary transition to multicellularity.