Category: Uncategorized

THE SELF-REPLICATOR. "One minimum requirement for evolution seems to be a self-replicator, suggesting that von Neumann saw it as the special case between degenerative production and increasing-complexity production, being able to produce something of the same level of complexity as itself." https://lnkd.in/d2nPhjW View in LinkedIn

ONE PROPOSED LINK. "A new model published this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, from AIP Publishing, proposes a potential mechanism by which self-replication could have emerged. It posits that template-assisted ligation, the joining of two polymers by using a third, longer one as a template, could have enabled polymers to become self-replicating." https://publishing.aip.org/publishing/journal-highlights/origins-life-new-model-may-explain-emergence-self-replication-early View in LinkedIn

MISSING LINK. "Or so the story goes. But with no fossil record to check from those early days, it's a narrative that still has some chapters missing. One question in particular remains problematic: what enabled the leap from a primordial soup of individual monomers to self-replicating polymer chains?" https://publishing.aip.org/publishing/journal-highlights/origins-life-new-model-may-explain-emergence-self-replication-early View in LinkedIn

THE DOGMA. "Then, somewhere along the line, these growing polymer chains developed the ability to make copies of themselves. Competition between these molecules would allow the ones most efficient at making copies of themselves to do so faster or with greater abundance, a trait that would be shared by the copies they made. These rapid replicators would fill the soup faster than the other polymers, allowing the information they encoded to be passed on from one generation to another and, eventually, giving rise to what we think of today as life." https://publishing.aip.org/publishing/journal-highlights/origins-life-new-model-may-explain-emergence-self-replication-early View in LinkedIn

SOME VIRTUES OF BOXES. "These molecular parasites would have been a major driver for the development of compartmentalization/cellularization, as more robust compartments could have outcompeted parasite-ridden compartments." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

POLYMER ASSEMBLY. "When life on Earth began nearly 4 billion years ago, long before humans, dinosaurs or even the earliest single-celled forms of life roamed, it may have started as a hiccup rather than a roar: small, simple molecular building blocks known as "monomers" coming together into longer "polymer" chains and falling apart in the warm pools of primordial ooze over and over again." https://lnkd.in/d8gcKMj View in LinkedIn

THE BOMBSHELL. "Nearly 55 years ago it was demonstrated that planarians could be trained to learn a task, and following amputation of the head, the animals regenerating from the original tail sections remembered the original training." (JV McConnell). http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/20/3799 View in LinkedIn

METAMORPHOSIS BRAINS. "Studies have identified several insect organisms in which memories survive the drastic reorganization of metamorphosis." This defies thinking about. http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/20/3799 View in LinkedIn

British power generation achieves first ever coal-free day https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/21/britain-set-for-first-coal-free-day-since-the-industrial-revolution?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

NEW HEAD REGENERATION. "Adult stem cell populations (neoblasts) underlie their remarkable regenerative abilities, and whole worms can regenerate from only a small proportion of the adult worm: a cut off (or damaged) head is rebuilt perfectly within few days." http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/20/3799 View in LinkedIn