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MESSY HYBRID. "Is the eukaryotic cell best seen as a kind of community composed of two or three taxonomically divergent entities or as a genuine individual that can be part of an evolving population of similar things? Should the answer have an impact on biological theory?" http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EXPECT THE IMPROBABLE. "However, combinatorial improbability is how evolution works: that eukaryotes arose is not unique in its uniqueness." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

LAUGHINGLY IMPROBABLE. "The combinatorial stringing together of all of the steps between LECA and Macropus rufus (the red kangaroo), Trichomonas vaginalis, or Mozart is, indeed, laughably improbable. Surely, if life’s tape was rewound, none of these would recur." (LECA = ). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

RIDDLES OF FORM "The waves of the sea, the little ripples on the shore, the sweeping curve of the sandy bay between the headlands, the outline of the hills, the shape of the clouds, all these are so many riddles of form." (D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson 1986-1948). https://lnkd.in/daEGKJJ View in LinkedIn

MESSY BOLT-ONS. "A patchy prokaryotic distribution of preeukaryotic features is what advocates of rampant LGT as a crucial evolutionary process should expect." (LGT = Lateral gene transfer). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE this next two weekends continues with the topic of spider web geometry, structure and function. That such small creatures can be so smart has been confounding, until the recent finding that in some small spiders, their central nervous system actually occupies ~80% of their body cavity and a quarter of their keg cavities, in contrast to other insects. https://lnkd.in/dDxNxEX View in LinkedIn

HOMOLOGS WILL CHANGE THE STORY. "One might predict a future day in which no steps (inventions or mechanisms) entailed in whatever is then the prevailing theory of eukaryogenesis are not found as homologs or reasonably matching analogs in one or another prokaryotic lineage." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

FACULTATIVE ENDOSYMBIOSIS. "Paulinella and its symbionts are mutually interdependent, and neither can replicate independently, indicating that the symbiosis is the result of a transition similar in many respects to eukaryogenesis." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EXPANDING THE SAMPLE. "Additional genomic exploration among the still largely uncharacterized TACK and DPANN archaea (a newly recognized monophyletic superphylum) cannot but further narrow the prokaryote–eukaryote gap." (TACK = phyla comprising Thaumarchaeota, Aigarchaeota, Crenarchaeota, and Korarchaeota). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EXAMPLE OF ENDOSYMBIONT. "P. chromatophora "harbors photosynthetic endosymbionts derived from free-living cyanobacteria. The chromatophores are vertically transmitted and partitioned to offspring equitably. There is also substantial genomic integration between host and symbiont as a result of EGT and the invention of protein import machinery." (P= Paulinella). (EGT = external gene transfer). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn