Category: Uncategorized

TEMPO AND MODE. "Unquestionably, eukaryotes evolve differently in tempo and mode than do prokaryotes, if we assess this by uniform measures of structural and functional innovation at the levels of genes and their products or cellular phenotypes." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

RADICALLY ALTERNATIVE METRIC. "Conceivably, its pangenome (especially if including rarer interspecific transfers) gives this single bacterial “species” a far greater range of metabolic innovation than that shown by all eukaryotes, a defensible alternative metric of evolutionary potential." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

COMPLEXITY AND THE PARAGENOME. "However, we would surely be hard pressed to show that co-optation is a more effective route to evolutionary innovation than LGT. Indeed, if LGT is fully integrated into our understanding of genomic complexity, then it is perhaps the full E. coli pangenome, soon to be if not already exceeding in number of coding sequences the human genome, that should be compared with the latter." (LGT = lateral gene transfer). http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATION OF NON-CODING DNA. "We are left then with the evolutionary potential of excess eukaryotic DNA and its ability to be co-opted into function, which might well impart a different tempo and mode to eukaryotic evolution." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EFFICIENCY IN SIMPLICITY. "In fact, because of their more rapid generation times and larger population sizes, we might expect prokaryotes to have more exquisitely refined regulatory systems, more selection per base pair as it were—a sort of historical complexity, alluded to above in our cyanobacteria vs. marsupial comparison." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

EFFICIENCY FALSEHOOD. "There is no reason to believe that unicellular protists with large genomes regulate the expression of their genes more efficiently or with greater flexibility than do prokaryotes with much less DNA." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

MESSY AND MALADADAPTIVE. "Some theorists have argued that the eukaryotic nucleus is the more primitive, burdened with inefficiencies left over from a rather messy origin of cellular life. Others, as we noted earlier, see it as replete with maladaptive genomic accumulations, which may or may not affect regulation of gene expression." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

NON-CODING DNA. "Although there is some roughly similar correlation in the number of protein coding sequences, most differences in genome size reflect transposable elements and noncoding intergenic spacers. Accepting (for argument only) that this material is regulatory in nature, we might still ask whether its possession is an evolutionary advancement, enabling greater phenotypic complexity." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

GENOMIC COMPLEXITY. "Maynard Smith and Szathmáry, not unlike others, entertained a genomic measure of complexity, noting in its favor a general increase in DNA content from prokaryotes to protists to multicellular animals and plants." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

SUPERORGANISMS. "Of course, a human is in many ways more complex an organism than a single E. coli cell, and to understand the former is, by far, the more daunting task. However, perhaps this comparison is not the right one. Shapiro has long held that it is the microbial colony and not the solitary cell on which biologists should focus their attention." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn