Year: 2022

MUTATION UNCERTAINTY. "Even harder than defining which seven loci Mendel studied is the question of which mutations he used. Theoretically, it is now quite clear that there are many possible mutations in each gene that could produce the same phenotype, especially if Mendel’s original mutation was a null." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

WHICH MUTATIONS. "It turns out also that Mendel’s mutations are due to a range of changes at the molecular level. While we cannot be certain in some instances of the exact mutations that he used, the range appears to include single base substitutions causing a single amino acid substitution (e.g., le-1), disruptions to splice sites, small insertions, and large transposon-like insertions." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

VINDICATED. "The cloning of four of Mendel’s genes has confirmed, with a few nuances, the Mendelian implication that there are fundamental units of inheritance that are passed from generation to generation. Indeed, if he were still with us, Mendel would probably be well pleased by the 20th century discoveries from the disciplines of cytology, biochemistry, and molecular biology." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

NEW ADDITIONS. "However, he would probably have also been surprised by some of the findings, for example, the finding that there can be intragenic recombination and other “large-scale” disruption of the inheritance units, which he envisaged to be transmitted intact from parent to offspring. However, such discoveries have added to and have refined the Mendelian model, rather than undermined it." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

ISSUE OF LINKAGE. "Certainly Mendel would be surprised by the phenomenon of linkage. It should be noted that during the 1950s and 1960s it became common for textbooks to indicate that Mendel’s seven characters were each located on separate chromosomes. In 1970 Ian Murfet pointed out this mistake, and it was subsequently corrected by a brief article in Nature by Stig Blixt." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

FOUNDATION AND LEGACY. "It would be possible to teach a well-balanced and modern genetics course based almost entirely on the use and understandings derived from Mendel’s seven characters." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

TOO GOOD? "The closeness of Mendel’s experimental observations to those predicted by his theories have led to numerous articles and ongoing debate about whether the data could have been obtained in the published form without some modification. There have been many plausible arguments made for and against this view by a range of eminent statisticians and geneticists." https://lnkd.in/d42Fwde View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE contemplates the tiny mighty ant for one weekend. These are one of nature’s greatest success stories, in no small part by organizing as super-organisms whose sheer drive and energy punch much higher than their weight. Ant communities takes the massive evolutionary leap of multicellularity to a new level of complexity: not just a division of labor among complex cells, but a division of labor and effective multicellularity among organisms that are themselves complex multicellular creatures. View in LinkedIn

ANTS AS A SUPERORGANISM (VIDEO), cheating, brood raiding, ant wars and peace treaties. Brilliant photography. Lack of reproduction contributes to the development of a non-centralized superorganism. And trillions of ants in super-colonies extending all over the world. Well worth watching. https://lnkd.in/dPF8b3T View in LinkedIn

"PARASITISM is currently considered to be one of the most powerful forces driving evolution. Traditionally, parasites are viruses, prokaryotes, or eukaryotes that exploit other such organisms. Recently, however, ultraselfish genetic elements (sex-ratio-distorting cytoplasmatic genes, meiotic drivers, etc., have also been considered to “parasitize” individual genes or complete genomes. At the other end of the range of biological entities, “social parasites” parasitize complete societies." Another huge leap in scale like multicellularity. https://lnkd.in/dkcthxh View in LinkedIn