Month: September 2022

SOIL ENGINEERING. "Darwin concluded that the ingestion of the topsoil, and its mixing, grinding, and digestion in the gut, continually exposed rock particles to chemical alteration, increasing the amount of soil. This process, and the addition of faecal casts from the worms, builds up the humus-rich topsoil and buries various materials originally on the surface (e.g., seeds, pebbles, archaeological artifacts) down to depths of 2 m, depending upon the depth of the earthworm burrows." https://lnkd.in/e8jbAfG View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first weekend on our friend the earthworm. Darwin set in motion the serious consideration of the importance of this creature to earth fertility. But in recent years in a headlong rush propelled by chemical companies we have all but broken our soils. Now, just as with antibiotics, we are at the cusp of realizing that a war on nature is not useful. Now we slowly realize that it is all about achieving an ecological balance of useful and harmful players. View in LinkedIn

VARIOUS SCIENTISTS have played key roles in the modern synthesis of post-Darwinian ideas. Along the way, I will give brief biographies of some of them. They are shaping our new thinking on molecular biology and evolution. View in LinkedIn

"DENIS NOBEL CBE FRS FRCP FMedSci (born 16 November 1936) is a British biologist who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology." One of the proponents of the new synthesis thinking. https://lnkd.in/ezwgytQ View in LinkedIn

PROFESSOR NOBEL'S KAROLINSKA LECTURE "what is life?" (2014). A classic physiologist. "The concept of a gene has changed -- it is central to what is wrong...with Neo-Darwinism." https://lnkd.in/e7JA93v View in LinkedIn

GENE CONCEPT IN FLUX. "The term “gene” is a theoretical construct whose functional properties and physical structure have never been possible to define rigorously. It is telling that genome sequence annotators used to call protein-coding regions (chiefly in prokaryotic DNA) “genes,” but now use the more neutral terms CDS, for “coding sequence." http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people/view/james-a-shapiro View in LinkedIn

"THE MUSIC OF LIFE: it is being played but nobody is playing it. The music of life has no conductor. What directs the music of life? Is it genes? Or is it not rather that they are like the pipes in a huge organ played by the organism?" (Prof Nobel, lecture on his book, The Music Of Life). https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/denis-noble View in LinkedIn

PROF DENIS NOBLE. "His 2006 book The Music of Life examines some of the basic aspects of systems biology, and is critical of the ideas of genetic determinism and genetic reductionism. He points out that there are many examples of feedback loops and "downward causation" in biology, and that it is not reasonable to privilege one level of understanding over all others. He also explains that genes in fact work in groups and systems, so that the genome is more like a set of organ pipes than a "blueprint for life". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Noble View in LinkedIn

"NOBEL has proposed Ten Principles of Systems Biology: Biological functionality is multi-level; Transmission of information is not one way; DNA is not the sole transmitter of inheritance; The theory of biological relativity: there is no privileged level of causality; Gene ontology will fail without higher-level insight; There is no genetic program; There are no programs at any other level; There are no programs in the brain; The self is not an object; There are many more to be discovered; a genuine ‘theory of biology’ does not yet exist." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Noble View in LinkedIn

PROF JAMES SHAPIRO: Harvard undergraduate (English), Cambridge PhD (genetics), Harvard, Pasteur, Tel Aviv, and Brandeis postdoctoral studies, then appointments at the University of Chicago and University of Edinburgh; a geneticist with a strong interest in mobile genetic elements. Phi Beta Kappa, Marshall Scholar, Darwin Prize, Fellow AAAS, honorary OBE, invited 2014 to give 3rd annual Nobel Prize Lecture. Proponent of new thinking in genetics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Shapiro View in LinkedIn