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THE ORIGIN OF LIFE, the definition of life, and the separation between biomolecules and a living organism have confounded the most brilliant minds. Concepts of continuums are a compromise. Thus, no surprises, the artificial life scientists, with their evolving code, have poked fun at our inability to decide by being deliberately provocative. And why not? View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR FITNESS. "It seems that the instability of the transition stems from the “counterattack” of the four-gene RNA-based individuals, which though lacking a better genetic material, did not have to endure a shortage of building blocks for ribozymes." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 View in LinkedIn

DISRUPTIVE JUMP. "However, since genetic material carries genetic information, the “source code” of all living activities, it is actually reasonable to question the plausibility of such a “revolutionary” transition." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 View in LinkedIn

RNA FIRST WORLD. " The emergence of DNA in the RNA world: an in silico simulation study of genetic takeover. It is now popularly accepted that there was an “RNA world” in early evolution of life. This idea has a direct consequence that later on there should have been a takeover of genetic material – RNA by DNA." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-015-0548-1 View in LinkedIn

CHROMOSOME ANALOGUES. "We can implement this genetic model of computation by having arrays of bits or characters to represent the chromosomes. Simple bit manipulation operations allow the implementation of crossover, mutation and other operations." http://www6.uniovi.es/ftp/pub/EC/FAQ/www/Q1_1.htm View in LinkedIn

PRECURSOR. "In modern organisms, DNA is the major genetic material and protein is the major functional material, both seeming indispensible. Thus, there is a dilemma for the evolution of life: “Which came first, DNA or proteins?” The RNA world hypothesis provided a possible solution to this problem: in some early stage of life, there is neither DNA nor protein but only RNA, acting as both genetic material and functional material." https://lnkd.in/dev3536 View in LinkedIn

COADAPTATION. "This paper introduces and demonstrates a novel brain-machine interface architecture based on the concepts of reinforcement learning, coadaptation, and shaping... reinforcement learning allows the brain-machine interface control algorithm to learn to complete tasks from interactions with the environment, rather than an explicit training signal. Coadaption enables continuous, synergistic adaptation between the brain-machine interface control algorithm and brain-machine interface user working in changing environments." https://lnkd.in/dstCTe2 View in LinkedIn

CRUDE GOOP. "The prebiotic molecules were relatively small and simple compared to the macromolecules that govern contemporary life. Moreover, as prebiotic molecules did not undergo the refinement and filtering of evolutionary processes, they lacked specificity and tuning towards a defined biochemical process." http://www.weizmann.ac.il/molgen/Lancet/sites/molgen.Lancet/files/uploads/shenhav_lancet_core.pdf View in LinkedIn

"THE GENETIC ALGORITHM is a model of machine learning which derives its behavior from a metaphor of some of the mechanisms of evolution in nature. This is done by the creation within a machine of a population of individuals represented by chromosomes, in essence a set of character strings that are analogous to the base-4 chromosomes that we see in our own DNA. The individuals in the population then go through a process of simulated "evolution"." https://lnkd.in/dNx-Znv View in LinkedIn

PREBIOTIC CALCULATIONS. "We have therefore argued in the past that prebiotic scenarios may be adequately described in terms of planet-scale random chemistry reactions. Based on a count of about 1 million molecule types for alkanes with up to 20 carbon atoms, it may be estimated that for compounds containing all CHNOPS atoms (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur) the number would be much larger than one billion." http://www.weizmann.ac.il/molgen/Lancet/sites/molgen.Lancet/files/uploads/shenhav_lancet_core.pdf View in LinkedIn