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EMERGENCE OF LIFE is an important question that relates to autonomous computer code or DNA equally. View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL LIFE is a topic that resembles the place of viruses and mobile genetic elements in biology: living in some twilight zone between definitions, with a quirky unexpectedness that comes from freaky variety. The real lesson is that human imagination is significantly limited in contrast to undirected variation. Enjoy this ride into the often funny side of evolution. View in LinkedIn

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

PARASITE VARIANT. “The latest such variant, discovered in a trypanosomatid (protist) symbiont of an insect by fossicking through symbiont sequences ‘contaminating’ the insect’s transcriptome. This non-canonical code is not only new and different, but also special because it may provide a glimpse into the intermediate stages of one of the rarest of changes in biology.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn

FIXED STRINGS. "Although a substantial amount of research has been performed on variable-length strings and other structures, the majority of work with genetic algorithms is focussed on fixed-length character strings." http://www6.uniovi.es/ftp/pub/EC/FAQ/www/Q1_1.htm View in LinkedIn

ORIGIN INSIGHTS. “The nature of these non-canonical codes, as well as their distribution on the tree of life, give us a few insights into how translation may have originated, deep differences between translation systems in use today, and what forces keep the code so conserved.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn

CANONICAL. “But the universal code is not quite universal — it is perhaps the most conserved feature of molecular biology, but even still some variants do exist (for which reason I prefer the term ‘canonical’ over ‘universal’).” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE concludes this weekend on the theme of the (nearly) universal genetic code, and the deviations from this code. In a world where everything evolves and diversification is the common factor, having a highly conserved code is perplexing. And for sure, in the beginning, it was not how it is today. How did this arise? View in LinkedIn