Month: September 2022

SURVIVAL OF THE GENE. "A useful way to look at this problem is Dawkins's "Selfish Gene" picture of evolution, where the fundamental unit to be maintained by natural selection is not the individual, nor the group or the species, but the gene." https://lnkd.in/ecMXQ_u View in LinkedIn

THE KEY PROOF. "If a given gene (region of DNA) or class of genes (regions) has evolved a strategy which increases its probability of survival within cells, then no additional (phenotypic) explanation for its origin or its continued existence is required." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

OUTSIDE OF SELECTION. "Although transposable elements may well be beneficially involved in eukaryote evolution, there are two reasons to doubt they arose or are maintained by selection pressures for such evolutionary functions." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

MOBILE ELEMENTS. "First, DNAs without immediate phenotypic benefit are of no immediate selective advantage to their possessor. Excess DNA should represent an energetic burden, and some of the activities of transposable elements are frankly destructive. Evolution is not anticipatory; structures do not evolve because they may later prove useful." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

NO EXPLANATION NEEDED. "Second, transposability itself ensures the survival of the transposed element, regardless of effects on organismal phenotype or evolutionary adaptability (unless these are sufficiently negative). Thus no other explanation for the origin and maintenance of transposable elements is necessary. https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION = ENERGY. "At the fundamental level of Life, the terms “Information” and “Energy” are almost interchangeable." https://lnkd.in/dRU3fkK View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION IS THE CURRENCY OF LIFE. "Life should not be thought of as a chemical event. Instead, it should be thought of as information...by reimagining living things as self-perpetuating information strings." (Physicist Christoph Adami). https://lnkd.in/dj6kjQt View in LinkedIn

“INFORMATION does not change whether it is encoded in bits, in nucleotides, or is scratched on a rock: Information is substrate-independent. But information is also, mathematically speaking, extremely rare. The probability of finding a sequence encoding a sizable chunk of information by chance is so small that for practical purposes it is zero." https://lnkd.in/d-TfSCW View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on the subject of genomic complexity. The the onion question exemplifies the issue. Next time you are chopping onions, use and consider that simple question, and see yourself in context. More next weekend. View in LinkedIn

UNEXPECTED. "All of the behaviours described were exhibited by creatures of the order of thousands of instructions or less. By comparison, viruses also tend towards the thousands of instructions, although examples have been demonstrated that were less than 40 bytes. The actions that we normally associate with higher organisms may arise in viruses more easily than expected." https://lnkd.in/g5hUBjg View in LinkedIn