Category: Uncategorized

NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF EXCEPTIONS. "Sizes of effects under our models have little impact, and sometimes no impact, on predicted hazard functions, but they have major impact on rates of turnover. For each allele, the reciprocal of the nonlinear age-specific force of natural selection indicates a typical clearance time." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn

VESTIGIAL EFFECTS. "It seems to us likely that effects of accumulating mutations in humans are now seen at postreproductive ages bearing age-specific signatures that were imprinted at earlier epochs when their contributions were more rapidly lethal at younger ages." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn

ODDBALL EXCEPTIONS. "For species like humans, with substantial postreproductive survival, theories that emphasize mutation accumulation face the challenge of accounting for the absence of a wall of death at the end of reproduction." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn

MUCH OF NON-CODING DNA OF UNKNOWN FUNCTION. "In this review, we provide an overview of the major arguments that have been presented in support of the notion that a large portion of most eukaryotic genomes lacks an organism-level function.” http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

MARGIN OF ERROR. "However, more recent computational models have demonstrated that genomes could sustain multiple slightly deleterious mutations per generation." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

LIFE AS A CURVE. "This biological observation, that the empirically determined specific growth rate appears to decay proportionally with time, yields a simple model of growth, according to which the organism grows by some fundamentally exponential process, which undergoes the observed decay over its whole range." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275818 View in LinkedIn

INNOVATIVE BURSTS. "Substantial increase in protein complexity appears to be associated only with the onset of the evolution of the two kingdoms of multicellular eukaryotic organisms, plants, and animals." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

SIGMOID CURVE. "In fact, all cells can do is divide, produce products of differentiation, migrate or remain in place, and die, but the combination of these activities over the course of time are described by a curve. Remarkably, for the years between puberty and senescence, this curve for human beings parallels the Gompertzian exponential." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275818 View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTE LOSSES. "Even more striking conclusions were reached by the reconstruction of the evolution of the eukaryotic protein domain repertoire that involved comparison of 114 genomes. The results of this reconstruction indicate that most of the major eukaryotic lineages have experienced a net loss of domains that have been traced to the LECA." (LECA = last eukaryotic common ancestor). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

NORMATIVE LITTLE DEATHS. "One can now list the number of times particular tissues are replaced in one year: lining of the small intestine; lining of the stomach; epidermal covering of the lips; hepatocytes of the liver; lining of the trachea; and lining of the bladder. And all this replacement is perfectly normal and not a consequence of trauma. Ultimately, biologists recognized the role of cells in death as well as life: a living thing dies when its cells no longer develop or maintain it." https://lnkd.in/dTkk9-R View in LinkedIn