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SPIDER BODY SIZE. "While past research suggested that small spiders producing thin diameter silks should compensate evolutionarily by producing tougher fibres, recent research instead reveals that evolutionary increases in orb spider body sizes are accompanied by concerted improvements in many different silk properties and web architectures." https://lnkd.in/dHWBg9g View in LinkedIn

BOTTOM-UP AND TOP-DOWN. "A full explanatory framework for biological processes should therefore include both bottom-up causation – such as when a gene is read-out to make a protein that affects cellular behavior – and top-down causation – as occurs when changes in the environment initiate an organismal response that permeates all the way down to the level of individual genes." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION. "A better understanding of how silks interact with web structures during prey capture, how and why silk properties vary at individual and interspecific levels, and what selective pressures drive the evolution of silk properties will reveal new possibilities for the application of silk analogues." https://lnkd.in/dHWBg9g View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES OF CAUSAL EFFICACY. "This convolution results in multidirectional causality with causal influences running both up and down the hierarchy of structure of biological systems (e.g. both from genome to proteome, and from proteome to genome via the switching on and off of genes)." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

STEREOTYPICAL WEBS. "The most species-rich families within Orbiculariae are the linyphiids and the theridiids. Each has independently transformed the orb into different aerial sheets. In both cases, these webs are distinguished from ancestral sheets not only in being aerial but also in the overall stereotypy of their architectures, a characteristic inherited from orb weaving ancestors." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

EFFICACY OF INFORMATION. "Perhaps even more profound, this abstraction appears to have causal efficacy - it is the information that determines the state and hence the dynamics. As such, it is the efficacy of information that leads to the convolution of dynamical laws and states that makes biology so unique." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

SPIDER FAMILIES. "Most of the current diversity of spiders results from 2 major radiations −RTA clade (>21,000 spp.) and Orbiculariae (>11,000 spp.). The putative sister group of Orbiculariae in our hypothesis, the RTA clade, is even more diverse (>21,000). Hence, we cannot, by sister group comparison alone, claim that the invention of the orb web per se dramatically affected diversification rates. Notably, the most diverse families of spiders within the RTA clade are largely, or entirely webless, and have secondarily lost cribellate silk." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

GENES IN CONTEXT OF CELLS. "It is meaningful, or biologically functional, only within the context of the cell, where a suite of molecular hardware collaborate in decoding and executing the encoded instruction (e.g. to make a protein). As such, biological information is an abstract global systemic entity, carrying meaning only within the context of an entire living system." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

MEANING IN CONTEXT. "Biological information is distinctive in its contextual or semantic nature, in other words it means something. For example, a gene is just a random sequence of nucleotides when taken in isolation, and is indistinguishable from junk, or noncoding, DNA." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

UNIQUE CONSEQUENCE OF INFORMATION. "The result is that the update rules change with time in a manner which is both a function of the current state and the history of the organism. This feature of “dynamical laws changing with states”, as far as we know, seems to be unique to biological organization and is a direct result of the peculiar nature of biological information." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn