Category: Uncategorized

GNARNY KNOT. "In the past, death posed a conundrum for biologists: death as such did not seem to perform a function in life, yet death seemed a part of life, since only living things died. Indeed, death did not seem to be one of life’s qualities, even though, with few exceptions, it was the end of life." https://lnkd.in/d-cTw6G View in LinkedIn

ERROR RATES. "We have recently developed a novel method that allows us to estimate transcription error rates and the degree to which these vary among eukaryotic lineages. Remarkably, error rates at this level are typically >1000x those at the level of genome replication. The implication is that >1% of transcripts typically contain an erroneous base." http://www.bio.indiana.edu/faculty/directory/profile.php?person=milynch View in LinkedIn

DEATH'S PATH. "Death is not unchanging, but rather has evolved over time." https://lnkd.in/dp_3aQ5 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF DEATH. "The evolutionary origin of senescence remains a fundamental unsolved problem in biology." https://lnkd.in/dUX_Fna View in LinkedIn

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

EVIDENCE-BASED. "Genomic complexity is far easier to quantify than phenotypic complexity (even if the latter is easier to recognize intuitively). Indeed, the remarkable progress of genome sequencing, combined with the development of computational methods for advanced comparative genomics, provides for increasingly reliable reconstruction of ancestral genomes which transforms the study of the evolution of complexity from being a speculative exercise to becoming an evidence-based research direction." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE concludes this weekend on the contemplation of biological complexification during evolution, with a focus on reductive evolution in genomes. It is generally thought that evolution always leads to greater complexity. But new evidence suggests that bursts of genetic complexification tend to be followed by long periods of genetic streamlining and loss of genes. This is not just true of parasites and symbiotic creatures, but surprisingly, also of eukaryotes. View in LinkedIn

"AGING evolved first to promote demographic stability." http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2013/07/22/evolution-of-evolution-and-evolution-of-death/ View in LinkedIn

ACCELERATION OF EFFICIENCY. "Evolution has bootstrapped its own process, creating the conditions that lead to more efficient evolution. Some biologists find this surprising, but it has undoubtedly occurred. Among the traits that lead to more efficient evolution is aging." http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2013/07/22/evolution-of-evolution-and-evolution-of-death/ 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