OneNet Theory of Life

The One Network (OneNet) Theory of Life is a new theory that has recently been published in a peer-reviewed article in the journal "Expert Reviews of Vaccines". This theory was developed through the study of the vaccine immune mechanism with a goal to improve vaccine efficacy and prevent vaccine adverse events.
The four tenets to the OneNet Theory of Life are:
# The whole process of a life of an organism is a single complex and dynamic network (called “OneNet”).
# The OneNet blueprint is stored in the genotype of the organism.
# The OneNet starts at the moment when the first cell of the organism forms.
# The OneNet of temporal interactions between the genetic materials and their environments determines the dynamic phenotype of the life.
The OneNet theory was generated by referencing, integrating and extending several existing theories, including the Evolutionary Theory, the Cell Theory, the immune network theory, and the Immune Response Gene Network theory. Specifically, the contemporary evolutionary theory (Evolutionary Synthesis Theory) studies the distinction and relationship between genotype and phenotype. The genotype provides a blueprint for an organism's development and growth, and the phenotype demonstrates the physical manifestation of a genotype. The environment will also influence the phenotype outcomes. The Cell Theory states that all organisms include one or more cells, the cell is the most basic unit of structure, function, and organization in any organism, and all cell are arisen from pre-existing, living cells. While these theories introduce the general principles on how cells and organisms evolve, they do not focus on uncovering the step-by-step molecular interaction network mechanisms of the cellular and organismic evolvements.
The Immune network theory explains the mechanism of the adaptive immune system. This theory indicates that the immune system is a network with the components connected to each other through special V-V interactions. The Immune Response Gene Network theory states that host response to a vaccine is the out of the interactions driven and between host genes. These two theories provide more specific mechanistic explanation on how a host organism responds to different triggers using its immune system. However, these two theories do not consider other host systems (e.g., developmental system) as integrated parts of the whole organism and its dynamic life.
By integrating and extending the above described theories, the OneNet theory treats the life of an organism as an integrated and dynamic network.<ref nameOneNetPaper/> Such a theory can be used to explain and study the life of a single cell bacterium like E. coli or a multi-cell organism like human. Furthermore, the original OneNet article <ref nameOneNetPaper/> proposes to use ontology-based strategy to logically represent different components of the OneNet theory.
The OneNet theory provides a framework for systematically studying what happens once a life has formed. OneNet integrates different development and growth stages of the whole life of an organism. The OneNet theory allows the deep explanation and analysis of various genotype-phenotype linkages such as the association between vaccination and vaccine adverse events.
It is noted that we just started to understand various molecular interaction pathways. There is still a long way to go before we can fully understand every interaction and pathway of the OneNet networks of various organisms starting from the moment when a cell is formed or fertilized.

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