Category: Uncategorized

THE FOUR INTO TWENTY. “The genetic code is a concept that captured the imaginations and drove much of the research of the first molecular biologists; almost immediately after the description of the double helix some very elegant models for how 4 ‘letters’ of DNA could encode 20 letters of protein were proposed.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

OTHER PLAYERS. “Phylogenetic analysis of translation system components, in particular aminoacyl–tRNA synthetases, shows that, at a stage of evolution when the translation system had already attained high fidelity, the correspondence between amino acids and cognate codons was determined by recognition of amino acids by RNA molecules, i.e., proto-tRNAs.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-genet-120116-024713 View in LinkedIn

FIDELITY IS A BY-PRODUCT. “The structure of the standard genetic code is nonrandom and ensures high robustness of the code to mutational and translational errors. However, this error minimization is most likely a by-product of the primordial code expansion driven by the diversification of the repertoire of protein amino acids, rather than a direct result of selection.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-genet-120116-024713 View in LinkedIn

WHY IT IS UNIVERSAL. “The universality of the code likely results from the combination of a frozen accident, i.e., the deleterious effect of codon reassignment in the standard genetic code, and the inhibitory effect of changes in the code on horizontal gene transfer.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-genet-120116-024713 View in LinkedIn

SELECTIVE PRESSURES. “The genetic code is not quite universal. The rare variations that we know of reveal selective pressures on the code and on the translation machinery. New data suggest the code changes through ambiguous intermediates and that termination is context dependent.“ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216309174 View in LinkedIn

RNA FIRST WORLD. " The emergence of DNA in the RNA world: an in silico simulation study of genetic takeover. It is now popularly accepted that there was an “RNA world” in early evolution of life. This idea has a direct consequence that later on there should have been a takeover of genetic material – RNA by DNA." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 View in LinkedIn

CHROMOSOME ANALOGUES. "We can implement this genetic model of computation by having arrays of bits or characters to represent the chromosomes. Simple bit manipulation operations allow the implementation of crossover, mutation and other operations." http://www6.uniovi.es/ftp/pub/EC/FAQ/www/Q1_1.htm View in LinkedIn

PRECURSOR. "In modern organisms, DNA is the major genetic material and protein is the major functional material, both seeming indispensible. Thus, there is a dilemma for the evolution of life: “Which came first, DNA or proteins?” The RNA world hypothesis provided a possible solution to this problem: in some early stage of life, there is neither DNA nor protein but only RNA, acting as both genetic material and functional material." https://lnkd.in/dev3536 View in LinkedIn

COADAPTATION. "This paper introduces and demonstrates a novel brain-machine interface architecture based on the concepts of reinforcement learning, coadaptation, and shaping... reinforcement learning allows the brain-machine interface control algorithm to learn to complete tasks from interactions with the environment, rather than an explicit training signal. Coadaption enables continuous, synergistic adaptation between the brain-machine interface control algorithm and brain-machine interface user working in changing environments." https://lnkd.in/dstCTe2 View in LinkedIn

CRUDE GOOP. "The prebiotic molecules were relatively small and simple compared to the macromolecules that govern contemporary life. Moreover, as prebiotic molecules did not undergo the refinement and filtering of evolutionary processes, they lacked specificity and tuning towards a defined biochemical process." http://www.weizmann.ac.il/molgen/Lancet/sites/molgen.Lancet/files/uploads/shenhav_lancet_core.pdf View in LinkedIn