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PAUL GAUGUIN (1897): "D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous." (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?). A central question for Gauguin, asked in his remarkable and haunting painting by the same title owned by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. And a central question for many biologists. http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/where-do-we-come-from-what-are-we-where-are-we-going-32558?sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiNvdvk86fRAhVFPBQKHTk6AtAQ_B0IETAA View in LinkedIn

ENERGY DEMANDS. "A very important problem for the transition from a relatively simple single-celled or colonial prokaryote to a complex eukaryote is the requirement for energy. Only eukaryotic cells can become complex. In other words, it is not possible to become a eukaryote without a mitochondrion." https://lnkd.in/dz-st9e View in LinkedIn

Fewer car owners and more driverless vehicles in future, survey reveals https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/09/fewer-car-owners-more-driverless-vehicles-future-survey-reveals?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

Extinction mugshots: 'See this? This is gone' View in LinkedIn

Paris mayor unveils plan ​to restrict traffic and pedestrianise city centre. Cities without cars. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/08/paris-mayor-anne-hidalgo-plan-restrict-traffic-pedestrianise-city-centre-france?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

TREE OF ONE PERCENT. "The phylogenetic relationships of eukaryotes have been analysed using both genome-scale data sets and smaller sets of genes...a recent analysis has shown that even these genealogy-defining genes undergo a constant rate of horizontal transfer, and the use of such a small collection of genes has been criticized for only being able to recover a “tree of one percent”." https://lnkd.in/dz-st9e View in LinkedIn

CHAIN OF EVENTS. "We suggest that major shifts in biological complexity – from lower level entities to the emergence of new, higher level entities – are associated with a physical transition (perhaps akin to a thermodynamic phase transition), and this physical transition is in turn associated with a fundamental change in causal structure." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

LATE INNOVATION. "We address eukaryogenesis from four perspectives — molecular phylogenetics, palaeontology, bioenergetics, and modern cell biology and biochemistry — each of which has contributed important and surprisingly congruent insights relating to this argument. It is the consilience of these lines of evidence that leads us to conclude that eukaryotes are not a primary lineage of life; rather, they are a relatively late innovation." https://lnkd.in/dz-st9e View in LinkedIn

POWER OF REASON. "We argue that hypothesis testing and inductive reasoning are consilient with a symbiogenic hypothesis for the origin of the Eukaryota." https://lnkd.in/dz-st9e View in LinkedIn

ONE GIANT LEAP? "Phylogenomic reconstructions show that the characteristic eukaryotic complexity arose almost 'ready made', without any intermediate grades seen between the prokaryotic and eukaryotic levels of organization. Explaining this apparent leap in complexity at the origin of eukaryotes is one of the principal challenges of evolutionary biology." https://lnkd.in/d_D8bWi View in LinkedIn