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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and ends this weekend on the theme of the very heart of evolution, inheritance with variation, or random gene mutation. The other face of evolution, natural selection, is performed by differential death and survival. Generate diversity, select and repeat. Generate diversity, select and repeat. This is evolution at its core. View in LinkedIn

Magnificent grove of plane trees in the Girona Devesa park. View in LinkedIn

MY EPITAPH. “Nothing perishes in this world; but things merely vary and change their form. To be born, means simply that a thing begins to be something different from what it was before; and dying, is ceasing to be the same thing. Yet although nothing retains long the same image, the sum of the whole remains constant.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses Book XV, 8 AD). https://lnkd.in/dhjhdUAs View in LinkedIn

APPLICATIONS TO ONCOLOGY. “Elucidating genome dynamics has similarly proved to be crucial for understanding many observations regarding the progression of neoplastic tumours.” https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3564 View in LinkedIn

CO-EVOLVING CELLS. “The complex interplay between ecological interactions and genetic contingency determined the evolutionary outcomes in these co-evolving populations.” https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3564 View in LinkedIn

NUTRIENT STARVATION. “Complex ecologies also evolve in closed cultures in which the nutrients are exhausted and are not renewed. In these cultures, the viable cell population declines over time, as starvation takes its toll. However, not all genotypes die at the same rate, and the survivors are enriched for growth advantage in stationary phase (GASP) mutants, that exploit by-products of dead and dying cells.” https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3564 View in LinkedIn

PAELLA. “This dish symbolizes the union and heritage of two importabt cultures, the Roman which gave us the utensil [tge pan] and the Arab which brought us the basic food of humanity for centuries: rice.” (Food historian Lourdes March, page 566) https://lnkd.in/db-rPDKy View in LinkedIn

TANGLED BANK. “In The Origin of Species, Darwin memorably envisioned a “tangled bank” in which organisms were “dependent upon each other in so complex a manner” as an outcome of natural selection. To this point, we have generally ignored ecological interactions beyond 'scramble' competition for limiting resources.” https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3564 View in LinkedIn

DARWINIZING GAIA. “Attempts to reconcile the Gaia hypothesis with Darwinian theory falter when organisms, species or even multi-species communities are seen as the relevant “units of selection”. If, instead, the biogeochemical cycles and other interaction networks that are implemented by such multi-species communities are taken as units of selection, a coherent theory of maintenance (if not also origins) can be articulated.” (Professor W. Ford Doolittle). https://lnkd.in/dVhTMKFm View in LinkedIn

GENETIC ARCHITECTURE. “As fitness landscapes are complex and may have multiple peaks, some mutational paths may lead to 'dead ends' with no, or at least fewer, opportunities to further improve. In other cases, certain mutations may open up new opportunities for evolution that could not be accessed if other routes were taken.” https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3564 View in LinkedIn