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PHAGES "promise to be the largest source of genetic diversity on Earth, a reservoir of untapped DNA with possible applications in health care, energy, agriculture, and beyond." https://lnkd.in/eaHyvSK View in LinkedIn

Daniel Oliver View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DARK MATTER. "In 2010, he and several of his collaborators were awarded a three-million-dollar National Science Foundation grant to investigate what they call viral dark matter, the estimated two billion pieces of unknown genetic code that likely exist only in the genomes of phages." https://lnkd.in/eaHyvSK View in LinkedIn

EMERGENT PHENOMENA. "The jumps — saltations, in complexity parlance — appear to be non-linear emergent phenomena, the result of networked interactions that produce self-organization at ever higher levels. From this perspective, Darwinian evolution is a mechanism of a higher universal law, perhaps even a variant on the second law of thermodynamics." http://www.wired.com/2008/02/complexity-theo/ View in LinkedIn

PHAGE DISCOVERY. "Viruses that attack bacteria were observed by Twort and d'Herelle in 1915 and 1917. They observed that broth cultures of certain intestinal bacteria could be dissolved by addition of a bacteria-free filtrate obtained from sewage. The lysis of the bacterial cells was said to be brought about by a virus which meant a "filterable poison" ("virus" is Latin for "poison")." https://lnkd.in/eBxpUF7 View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL LEAPS. "A growing number of scientists do say that neo-Darwinian evolution doesn’t explain certain jumps in biological complexity: from single-celled to multicellular organisms, from single organisms to entire communities." https://lnkd.in/ezFxqyc View in LinkedIn

MARIPOSA. "Complex systems exist on the ‘edge of chaos'. They might show regular and predictable behaviour, but they can undergo sudden massive and stochastic changes in response to what seem like minor modifications. The metaphor of the ‘butterfly effect'—whereby a single butterfly beating its wings can cause a storm—describes, for example, the dependence of a complex system on its initial conditions." https://lnkd.in/eMxMq5U View in LinkedIn

HEISENBURGISM. "Many interesting and relevant ecological phenomena cannot be replicated in laboratory conditions, and thus cannot be measured or observed without influencing and changing the system in some way. He also points to the importance of interconnectedness in biological systems." (Sven Erik Jorgensen, an ecologist). https://lnkd.in/eQdwnM9 View in LinkedIn

REDUCTIONISM. "As the writer Alvin Toffler so succinctly described, "One of the most highly developed skills in contemporary Western civilization is dissection: the split-up of problems into their smallest possible components. We are good at it. So good, we often forget to put the pieces together again." https://lnkd.in/ecSgRXK View in LinkedIn

ALL ABOUT INFORMATION. "We define biological complexity as the genetic information that an organism has about its environment." https://lnkd.in/ejhFeVa View in LinkedIn