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VAST DIMENSIONS. "Biology is more complex than astronomy or physics or chemistry...In fact, it may be too complex for the human brain to comprehend. This complexity stems from the fact that biological processes range in size from the dimensions of an atom to those of a whale and in time from a billionth of a second to billions of seconds." https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

INCREDIBLE DIVERSITY. "The thing that even most biologists don’t get—let alone most of the rest of the world—is that phages are the most diverse things on the planet, and there are more of them than anything else, and we really don’t have a clue” https://lnkd.in/eaHyvSK View in LinkedIn

ASCENDING COMPLEXITY. "Cells can then be organized into tissues, which form organs, and organs can be grouped into organ systems, which are built into entire organisms—including humans like you. Organisms are units that can form populations, and then biospheres, which go on to make up even greater levels of complexity." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn

VAST CYCLES OF MATTER. "These tiny viruses cause a collective trillion trillion successful infections per second, in the process destroying up to forty per cent of all bacterial cells in the ocean every single day. Following their deaths at the hands of phages, those carbon-containing microorganisms sink down into the marine sediment, effectively removing greenhouse gases from circulation." https://lnkd.in/eaHyvSK View in LinkedIn

SCALES. "It may be difficult to imagine that your body is made of spinning protons, neutrons, and electrons, but this is indeed the case. It's slightly easier, however, to picture forms of matter in levels that increase in complexity. For example, subatomic particles can be organized into atoms, which are the components of molecules, and molecules can be organized into macromolecules, such as DNA and proteins, which can be built into cells." https://lnkd.in/epkJVpt View in LinkedIn

DIZZYING GYRES. "The release of lysis products by phages converts organic carbon from particulate (cells) to dissolved forms (lysis products), which makes organic carbon more bio-available and thus acts as a catalyst of geochemical nutrient cycles." (Thank you WB Yeats). https://lnkd.in/eJieipg View in LinkedIn

NUMEROUS. "There are probably more individual bacteriophages in the biosphere than there are of any other group of organisms, including all the prokaryotes." https://lnkd.in/eBxpUF7 View in LinkedIn

BACTERIOPHAGES. "It is widely accepted that phages represent substantial forces in prokaryotic evolution, with the integrated phages (prophages) accounting for as much as 10-20% of some bacterial genomes. Recent data reveal that several non-retroviral viruses have also contributed to the genetic makeup of many eukaryotic organisms." http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/11/276/ View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS the section on biological complexity. Not only is the discrete attribute of life on an ascending scale hard to define -- where a molecule ends and an organism starts -- but increasingly, there is an appreciation that the cell blurs into the organism, which blurs into the population, which in turn is interactive in an ecosystem. View in LinkedIn

ONE BASE CHANGE. "For example, a mutation, or change, in a single DNA base in a single gene can result in diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy in humans at the organismal level." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 View in LinkedIn