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GENE-DRIVEN DOGMA. "It was natural for scientists to assume that protein-encoding genes would be at the heart of evolutionary progress. After all, evolution has created organisms with radically different appearances and functional components." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

EARLY FUNCTIONS OF NON-CODING DNA. "Clearly, protein-coding genes must have arisen de novo from non-coding sequence in very early life evolution." https://lnkd.in/dPqZs3m View in LinkedIn

GENETIC TINKERING. "François Jacob famously stated that nature is but a “tinkerer” of already available protein hardware, advocating the importance of duplications in gene emergence." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

PURGING NOVELTY. "Any random sequence generated by chance must end up as a stable polypeptide with a function accessible by selection or end up being purged from the genome by neutral mutational processes." Here is the great scrapheap of nature's genetic experiments. https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

IMPROBABILITY OF NOVELTY. "The evolution of an entirely new gene without any functional progenitor has been regarded as an exceedingly rare and improbable event. Considering the vast number of possible protein species and the rather limited number of configurations found in biological systems, this notion might seem to make sense." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

GENERATION OF NOVELTY. "For many years, it had been considered extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that genes with no detectable homology could emerge. With the availability of the full genomic sequence of yeast, however, this picture changed. About one third of the entire set of genes in baker's yeast has no sequence similarity to genes from other organisms." (So-called orphan genes). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn

ANGIOSPERM HALLMARK. "Fertilization of both egg and central cell is a major distinguishing feature of flowering plants. Almost 120 years ago, Sergei Gavrilovich Navashin (1898) and Léon Guignard (1899) described independently for the first time that two fertilization events occur in lily, a major model plant at that time. The universality of this observation was confirmed in numerous flowering plant species (angiosperms) and is now widely considered as a major feature distinguishing angiosperms from all other organisms." https://lnkd.in/du6ggE4 View in LinkedIn

DOUBLE FERTILIZATION VIDEO. Angiosperms undergo double fertilization; gymnosperms, pines, ferns and mosses do not. https://lnkd.in/d8JsyNd View in LinkedIn

DOUBLE FERTILIZATION IN PLANTS (Dr Larry Jensen). A superb primer. Brilliant animation work that illustrates flower reproduction and pollen production. Were all teaching tools this good! https://lnkd.in/dGbeC4R View in LinkedIn

"POLLEN GRAINS can be transported over long distances by wind or animal pollinators, are mostly tolerant of desiccation, and are capable of generating a long tube that grows deeply into the maternal tissues of the ovary that harbor the protected female gametes (egg and central cell). These structural innovations likely exerted a significant influence on the evolution of communication mechanisms in sexual reproduction." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn