Month: September 2022

NICE BUT NOT NECESSARY. "Gymnosperms lacking double fertilization dominate large areas of the Earth, e.g. the Taiga or Northern Coniferous Forest. Therefore, double fertilization is not a requirement for success in seed plants." http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2004-01/1073524356.Bt.r.html View in LinkedIn

THIRD FUSION EVENT. "Now, Maruyama et al. report a third cell fusion event between the persistent synergid and the fertilized central cell shortly after double fertilization in Arabidopsis. This causes rapid dilution of pollen tube attractant(s), preventing polytubey." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415004882 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this journey into the reproductive oddities of flowering plants. Evolution has devised such a complex way of ensuring continuity of their species and the avoidance of self-fertilization. This is a poster child of how natural systems are not designed from scratch with logical efficiency, but rather have been assembled from a scrapyard of available haphazard parts, by the agency of chance and quirks of situation, into an improbable assembly that somehow still works. Elegant it is not. View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003881 View in LinkedIn

ENORMOUS PROTEIN DIVERSITY. "How the enormous structural and functional diversity of new genes and proteins was generated (estimated to be 10(10)–10(12) different proteins in all organisms on earth. Evolution of protein structural classes and protein sequence families is a central biological question that has a long and rich history." (10(11) = Equivalent to the number of galaxies in the observable universe). https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

PROMISCUOUS REACTIONS. "How widespread is promiscuity”? A number of biochemical and genetic evidence supports the idea that many enzymes can catalyze adventitious secondary reactions (i.e., they have promiscuous activities), and that these activities are sometimes high enough to contribute to the fitness of the organism with the proper selective pressure and when overexpressed." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

NEW GENES may be generated but are they functional within the cell, with a pre-existing and very complex network of relationships between millions of groups of proteins? View in LinkedIn

QUICK CHANGE ENGINE. "A large part of the interest in de novo genes is to do with understanding their potential to evolve novel functions in a relatively short time-frame. There are a few examples of de novo genes with well-characterized functionality." https://lnkd.in/dPqZs3m View in LinkedIn

FUNCTIONALITY OF DE NOVO GENES. "Comparing genes of different ages in yeast, de novo genes, and their precursors were enriched for binding of transcription factors related to stress and mating." Are stress and increased rates of reproduction a driver for new genes? It would make sense, given an expanded ability to exploit new emerging niches. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn

STRESS DRIVER OF GENETIC NOVELTY. "De novo genes in plants are often tissue-specifically expressed with stress-induced responsiveness." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn