Concepts in Biology: A Historical Perspective

This book provides a comprehensive review of the history of concepts of the endocrine, nervous and immune systems throughout the last century.

Historically, these systems were long considered as compartments that performed separate and different functions. However, a breakthrough occurred when advances in genetics and cellular and molecular biology techniques revealed that these systems shared molecular entities (such as cytokines, hormones and neurotransmitters) with their cognate receptor...