Year: 2022

EXQUISITE PARTICULARITY. "A very small change in a single macromolecule can have a profound effect on an organism, or even a population, when magnified through levels of complexity. For instance, when a disturbance such as a genetic mutation is introduced in any level, it can affect all of the higher levels of organization. The effect of such a disturbance can be either severe or trivial." http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/biological-complexity-and-integrative-levels-of-organization-468 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FASTIDIOUS. "Phages mostly refuse to grow in the lab, except in a mouse." https://lnkd.in/eaHyvSK View in LinkedIn

PHAGE SOUP. "Astonishingly, in coastal sea water there are typically as many as 10(7) (ten million) tailed phages per milliliter. In some fresh water sources there are up to 10(9) (a billion) per milliliter." https://lnkd.in/eBxpUF7 View in LinkedIn