Year: 2022

INTERSPECIES MERGERS. "Animals can no longer be considered individuals in any sense of classical biology: anatomical, developmental, physiological, immunological, genetic, or evolutionary. Our bodies must be understood as holobionts whose anatomical, physiological, immunological, and developmental functions evolved in shared relationships of different species." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

NEWTHINK. "For animals, as well as plants, there have never been individuals." Contemplate this carefully. https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

LIFE-VIEW. "We are all lichens." (Fungal plus algae hybrid creatures). https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this fragment on biological individuality. It is clear that an increasing number of life scientists believe that individuality is a mirage. We are already painfully aware that a scorched-earth policy with antibiotics is a failed concept, and that calling a large and diverse group of microorganisms 'germs' is becoming, slowly, a thing of the past. Already, the microbiome project is illuminating new drugs, not made of molecules, but of living things. We are embarking on a new age. View in LinkedIn

ORGANISMS AT THE EDGE OF LIFE is a favorite topic of mine, because they challenge our assumptions. These include the definitions of life itself, and of the species. If we are exploring the universe for other life forms, it seems that we must revise some quaint thinking on both topics. I also call this theme the Grey Zone. This is especially exemplified by viruses and mobile genetic elements. View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR BEHAVIOR. "We describe the initial realization of behavior in the biosphere, which we term behavioral chemistry. If molecules are complex enough to attain a stochastic element to their structural conformation in such as a way as to radically affect their function in a biological (evolvable) setting, then they have the capacity to behave." https://lnkd.in/ddnX_69 View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR COMPLEXITY. "Behavior is an integral feature of life. Behavior is manifest when a choice is possible, and a living entity responds to its environment in one of multiple possible ways." https://lnkd.in/ddnX_69 View in LinkedIn

MIMIVIRUSES. "The issue of life without cellular structure came again to the fore with the 2003 discovery that the large and complex Mimivirus can synthesize proteins. This discovery suggests the possibility that some viruses may have evolved from earlier forms that could produce proteins independent of a host cell." Very confounding. https://lnkd.in/e7AX8A4 View in LinkedIn

"DARWIN provided a great unifying theory for biology; its visual expression is the universal tree of life. The tree concept is challenged by the occurrence of horizontal gene transfer and...by the omission of viruses." We still have not remedied the oversight. https://lnkd.in/e6G-N4S View in LinkedIn

"MIMIVIRUS has the largest known viral genome (1.18 megabase-pairs) and encodes an unprecedented number of components of the transcriptional, translational and replication machinery, many of which have not previously been identified in viruses." https://lnkd.in/e9h9zTt View in LinkedIn