Year: 2022

FUNCTION OF MEIOSIS. "Because the number of chromosomes is halved during meiosis, gametes can fuse (i.e. fertilization) to form a diploid zygote that contains two copies of each chromosome, one from each parent. Thus, alternating cycles of meiosis and fertilization enable sexual reproduction, with successive generations maintaining the same number of chromosomes." https://lnkd.in/dfR-g7Z View in LinkedIn

HOTSPOT DRIVERS OF DIVERSITY. "Meiosis is a potentially important source of germline mutations, as sites of meiotic recombination experience recurrent double-strand breaks (DSBs). Meiotic recombination, localized in recombination hotspots, not only increases genetic diversity via the formation of new haplotypes but is also an important driver of sequence evolution." https://lnkd.in/df6FZrB View in LinkedIn

DNA SEQUENCE EVOLUTION IS ALL! Except for extranuclear evolution. https://lnkd.in/df6FZrB View in LinkedIn

MESMERIZINGLY STUPID. Today, it seems, all we can talk about is the tweets of the US president. What about extraterrestial life? View in LinkedIn

FORTY TWO. "As the computer Deep Thought pointed out in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s no good spending seven and a half million years working on the answer if you don’t start with a good idea of what the question is." " "The Answers by Catherine Lacey review – how to solve the love problem https://lnkd.in/eNPN7Gz View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE is about reverse speciation, which is almost a Darwinian heresy. Niche exploitation by becoming increasingly specialized has been well studied, exemplified in Darwin’s finches and in orchid-pollinator relationships. As species become more specialized, breeding isolation results in the formation of new species. For a long time, biologists thought that there were examples where specialization could lead to evolutionary dead-ends and species extinction. In recent years, this has been re-examined. View in LinkedIn

FORWARD SPECIATION. "Darwin (1859) developed the theory of natural selection to explain how populations diverge morphologically and ecologically as they adapt to local environmental conditions. To Darwin, speciation was simply the end point of a chronological series of steps, beginning with variation among individuals within species to the production of adaptively differentiated varieties and eventually to new species, with extinctions occurring along the way." https://lnkd.in/dFv5hTH View in LinkedIn

"EVOLUTIONARY DEAD ENDS are traits that increase the likelihood of extinction, but become fixed within species because they are thought to initially provide a short-term evolutionary advantage. Some classic hypothesized dead ends include asexuality, selfing, polyploidy, and specialization." https://lnkd.in/dY4khXd View in LinkedIn

"SPECIALIZATION is a repeated pattern in living systems, suggesting that there are general mechanisms underlying its evolution. Clearly, every species interacts with only a small subset of all other species and in only a subset of habitats." https://lnkd.in/dcsE4uQ View in LinkedIn

OLDER VIEW. "Is specialization a dead-end? A once-held view was that the evolution of specialization was a one-way street, with transitions back to a broader niche breadth being restricted." http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1795/20142004.short View in LinkedIn