McDonnell Initiative leaders Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein, and Lucie Laplane have featured articles in the new eLife collection “Philosophy of Biology”.

MacCord and Maienschein co-authored a paper, “Understanding regeneration at different scales”, that highlights the driving question of the McDonnell Initiative: Is there an underlying logic of regeneration, and, if so, what do we need to know to find it? Laplane, along with head of research at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Eric Solary, co-published their work, “Toward a classification of stem cells”. Laplane and Solary’s paper builds on Laplane’s previous work on the metaphysics of cancer stem cells, captured in her 2016 book Cancer Stem Cells: Philosophy and Therapies.

eLife is a leading journal in providing scientists with a venue for open access publications and for promoting understanding of research. The contributions by MacCord, Maienschein, and Laplane are the first in the “Philosophy of Biology” series, which eLife editors have put together to promote the understanding of how philosophy can impact and improve the life sciences.