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PEAR-SHAPED WORLD. “Despite multi-cellular eukaryotes being merely that “few percent of the whole,” nearly all of classical biology, from Aristotle onwards, has been based on the composition and characteristics of multi-cellular eukaryotes. To put it bluntly, classical biology has been the study of multi-cellular eukaryotes by multi-cellular eukaryotes for multi-cellular eukaryotes.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

PLASTICITY BUFFER. “Plasticity may also serve to buffer populations from environmental change, thus reducing the risk of extinction and making adaptive evolution possible.” https://lnkd.in/dAmAVYa View in LinkedIn

OUR REALITY IS A DERIVED CONDITION. “The relationship of quantum biology to classical biology has much in common with the relationship between quantum and classical physics. In both cases, the quantum realms deal with very small entities that behave in a counter-intuitive manner, profoundly different from classical understanding. And, in both cases the quantum realm is proving to be the more fundamental, with the classical view describing a derived and specialized condition.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

MULTIPLE EFFECTS. “Plasticity may have a variety of influences on contemporary evolution, ranging from being a constraint on adaptive evolution (owing to reduced selection) all the way to being a promoter of adaptive evolution (by bringing populations into the domain of attraction of new fitness peaks).” https://lnkd.in/dAmAVYa View in LinkedIn

THE FEW PERCENTAGE CROWD. “In this darkness there is a small admixture, a few percent of the whole, which consists of the ordinary multi-cellular eukaryotic life that makes up the fungi and plants and animals and us. As such, the properties and behavior of biological dark matter comprise what might be termed, metaphorically, quantum biology.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

“PHENOTYPIC PLASTICITY results from the developmental and behavioral responses of genotypes to environmental influences, and operates both within and across generations.” https://lnkd.in/dAmAVYa View in LinkedIn

MINOR PLAYERS IN UNPEAR-SHAPED WORLD. “Prokaryotes comprise about half the biomass of the non-viral biosphere and nearly all of its physiological biodiversity (defined in terms of diversity of tolerated ecological conditions and biochemical capacities). To paraphrase Weinberg, our biosphere is mostly biological dark matter.” (Half the biomass is understated: today, we have only described, let alone characterized,

“BIOLOGICAL DARK MATTER, akin to cosmological dark matter, is an apt descriptor for this overwhelming and unseen component of the biosphere. These studies are forcing us to recognize that, rather than typifying life, multi-cellular eukaryotes are actually a derived and highly constrained evolutionary subset of the biosphere.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

PROTECTED GENOMES. “Within multi-cellular eukaryotes cells, genetic information is stored in a very stable, heavily regulated genome whose content is well protected from outside influences. Generating a multi-cellular state requires a regulated genome, and the successful regulation of gene expression, both in development and in physiology, depends in part on the maintenance of stable genomic content.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

BROKEN BOUNDARY. “In the dark-matter realm of prokaryotes, none of this is true. Prokaryotes have only one kind of cell division and thus, for them, there can be no distinction between growth and reproduction. With no distinction between somatic cells and germs cells, individuals in the Weismannian sense cannot occur.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn