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EMBEDDED. “Functionality, however, is not a local property of a molecule.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends contemplates biological information, how it is organized, and how it may contribute to the transition from inert molecules to that which we call life, what I like to call the Grey Zone. This is at the heart of the issue of the origin of life, and at the heart of how we would even recognize life on another planet. As humans, we have a very, very, modest grip on this topic. View in LinkedIn

FUNCTIONALITY REVEALS DATA. “The genetic material could just as easily be a different variety of nucleic acid (or a different molecule altogether), as recently experimentally confirmed. It is the functionality of the expressed RNAs and proteins—not the bits—that is biologically important.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

HARD DRIVE. “Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins. The biologically relevant information stored in DNA therefore has very little to do with its specific chemical nature (beyond the fact that it is a digital linear polymer).” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

CONTEXTUALITY NOT BLUEPRINT. “The genome is only a small part of the story. DNA is not a blueprint for an organism: no information is actively processed by DNA alone.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

“BIOLOGICAL INFORMATION has an additional quality which may roughly be called ‘functionality’—or ‘contextuality’—that sets it apart from a collection of mere bits.” https://lnkd.in/ewsT9EQ View in LinkedIn

UNEQUAL EVOLUTION. "Sex differences in expression have been connected to gene divergence in numerous eukaryotes. For instance, genes with enriched transcription in males, commonly referred to as male-biased genes, typically evolve more rapidly at the protein level than female-biased or unbiased genes." https://lnkd.in/eUbE-is View in LinkedIn

GENETIC ORIGINS. "Sex differences in transcription have been linked to molecular evolution: genes with higher expression in male compared with female sexual tissues (i.e., male-biased genes) have been associated with rapid gene divergence in various animals and plants, implying that selective differences exist among the sexual structures." https://lnkd.in/eUbE-is View in LinkedIn

NEUROSPORA UNEQUAL EXPRESSION. "Differential gene expression is believed to largely explain sexually dichotomous phenotypes. This phenomenon is especially significant in hermaphrodites, in which male and female sexual tissues have identical genotypes." https://lnkd.in/eUbE-is View in LinkedIn

CASE STUDY 2. HERMAPHRODITE FUNGUS NEUROSPORA CRASSA serves to illustrate a second case of reproductive flexibility. View in LinkedIn