Year: 2022

BEYOND EVOLUTION. "A related viewpoint that I’ve heard said is that we humans have managed to extricate ourselves from the evolutionary struggle: our technological prowess has enabled us to raise ourselves above the survival of the fittest; we are, quite simply, the fittest." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn

INEVITABLE. " And another related viewpoint is that we humans were somehow the inevitable outcome of the evolutionary process." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn

A MERE BLINK OF THE EYE. "We have no idea what future evolution has in store for humans. Biologically, modern humans have only been in existence for about 200,000 years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms; culturally and technologically, advanced human societies have only arisen in the last 4000 years or so, an even more miniscule timespan when placed against the history of life on earth." https://lnkd.in/dq73Az6 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues the contemplation of self in a biological sense. Our mindset is geared to assume that individuality is a reality in living organisms, and that competition between individuals is the grist of natural selection, niche expansion, and eventual speciation. But a new perspective is emerging, that the individual is a community of species that co-evolve, collaborate, and are inseparable. View in LinkedIn

OLD PARADIGM. "The immune individual rejects anything that is not “self.” Accordingly, if it were not for the immune system, opportunistic infections would prevail (as they do in cases of immune deficiencies) and the organism would perish." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

IMMUNE SYSTEM. "In a fascinating inversion of this view of life, however, recent studies have shown that an individual's immune system is in part created by the resident microbiome. In vertebrates, the gut-associated lymphoid tissue is specified and organized by bacterial symbionts. The immune system does not function properly and its repertoire is significantly reduced when symbiotic microbes are absent in the gut." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

ANTIVIRAL SYSTEM. "This ability of symbionts to condition and promote the immune capacities of the holobiont is not exclusive to vertebrates. In several insect species, bacteria of the genus Wolbachia appear to play an important role in antiviral protection." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

PLANT PATHOGEN IMMUNITY. "In plants, endophytes, the diverse and widespread fungi that live out most of their life cycle in plant tissue, provide enhanced pathogen immunity to their host; they can also ward off herbivores, among other benefits. Thus, immune systems are created, in part, by microbial symbionts." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

ORGANISMS AS COMPLEXES. "It is evident that organisms are anatomically, physiologically, developmentally, genetically, and immunologically multigenomic and multispecies complexes." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

HIGHER LEVEL SELECTION. "Can it be that organisms are selected as multigenomic associations? Is the fittest in life's struggle the multispecies group, and not an individual of a single species in that group?" https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn