linkedin post 2017-05-28 07:22:37

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SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003881 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-05-28 05:28:07

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SO ENDS this journey into the reproductive oddities of flowering plants. Evolution has devised such a complex way of ensuring continuity of their species and the avoidance of self-fertilization. This is a poster child of how natural systems are not designed from scratch with logical efficiency, but rather have been assembled from a scrapyard of available haphazard parts, by the agency of chance and quirks of situation, into an improbable assembly that somehow still works. Elegant it is not. View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-05-28 05:26:08

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THIRD FUSION EVENT. "Now, Maruyama et al. report a third cell fusion event between the persistent synergid and the fertilized central cell shortly after double fertilization in Arabidopsis. This causes rapid dilution of pollen tube attractant(s), preventing polytubey." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415004882 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-05-28 05:24:31

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NICE BUT NOT NECESSARY. "Gymnosperms lacking double fertilization dominate large areas of the Earth, e.g. the Taiga or Northern Coniferous Forest. Therefore, double fertilization is not a requirement for success in seed plants." http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2004-01/1073524356.Bt.r.html View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-05-30 05:13:07

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ANCIENT FORMATS. "The presence of proteins with identical folds but no discernible sequence identity has been noted by structural biologists throughout the years. Whether these cases are examples of extreme divergence from a common ancestor or convergent evolution is difficult to address from genome sequences alone." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-05-28 05:19:38

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HAPPENSTANCE. "We are not positive why double fertilization occurs. Arthur Cronquist (1971) considered double fertilization a "mere evolutionary happenstance." One possible advantage of double fertilization is that the plant does not invest energy in seed nutritive tissue until after an egg has been fertilized. Another possible advantage is that the endosperm nucleus is very active and divides rapidly. It forms the nutritive tissue very quickly. Rapid seed development has obvious advantages." http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2004-01/1073524356.Bt.r.html View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-06-01 05:02:14

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PROTEIN VARIANT SELECTION. "It has been proposed that protein promiscuity (i.e., non-specific interaction) provides the basis for novel protein–protein interactions. Once established, natural selection will favor beneficial protein–protein interactions and incorporate changes stabilizing them." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2017-06-01 04:57:53

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NEW GENE REGULATORS. "The first step is the integration into regulatory networks, primarily through acquisition of promoters. The analysis of retroposed genes indicated that regulatory elements can be acquired rapidly from nearby genes or more distant positions in the genome." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn
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