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SINGLE ENTITY. "Important to note is that in many cases the interests of the bacterium and an already resident prophage become completely aligned upon obligately lytic phage infection (i.e. infection by phages that do not insert into the bacterial genome, but kill the bacterium instantly), such that they can be regarded as one genetic entity." https://lnkd.in/d53-z28 View in LinkedIn

RULES FOR DEVELOPMENT. "Evolution of suicide as a defense mechanism is only possible if (i) the host population is structured and (ii) the degree of immunity that the hosts can achieve by other means is limited. The widespread nature of suicide systems in prokaryotic genomes calls for a reconsideration of the relative importance of population structure for genome evolution." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

LEADING THE RACE. "Studies on host-parasite local adaptation suggest that parasites are usually ahead of hosts in this coevolutionary arms race." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

SOCIAL POPULATIONS. "The presence of programmed cell death systems in the great majority of prokaryotes strongly suggests that structured populations are the rule in microbial ecosystems. Indeed, some kind of social interaction, such as biofilm formation, is found on almost every bacterial group, and more advanced forms of sociality, such as quorum sensing, are often present in Proteobacteria and Firmicutes." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

CONSTRAINTS. "In real biological communities, the efficacy of innate and adaptive immune systems is constrained by ecological factors such as population size, structure and diversity. The never-stopping arms race between hosts and pathogens sets a limit on the performance of defense strategies, which is determined by the ability of the host to keep the pace with pathogen escape mutations." https://lnkd.in/d9zsv9R View in LinkedIn

COMPLEXITY FROM SIMPLICITY. "Scientists have discovered in recent years that some seemingly complicated patterns, like the branching, jagged structures of plants, have simple descriptions in the language of fractal geometry, in which patterns are built up from rules repeated on different scales." https://lnkd.in/d8uZSVQ View in LinkedIn

SQUISHY QUESTIONS. "When does a curve look like a bug?" It is easier for a person to answer this question than any algorithm. https://lnkd.in/dZcpeGh View in LinkedIn

LEFT FIELD. "The recognition in recent years that complexity can arise spontaneously from simple systems gives the field of artificial life its strongest motivation. The scientists agreed that the most promising demonstrations were those whose lifelike qualities emerge unbidden, surprising even their programmers. 'Miracles Aren't Allowed'." https://lnkd.in/d8uZSVQ View in LinkedIn

ABSTRACTABLE LOGIC. "Stripped of bone and sinew, leaf and petal, ribosome and chromosome, life still has a unique logic that can be abstracted in a computer." https://lnkd.in/d8uZSVQ View in LinkedIn

RICHARD DAWKINS, on artificial life. "It's not a substance; there's no living material. It's just an incidental fact that in real living things the entities that happen to be organized happen to be made of organic, soft, squishy stuff, whereas in a computer they're made of hard, nonmoving chips.'' https://lnkd.in/d8uZSVQ View in LinkedIn