Category: Uncategorized

E COLI ALTRUISM. "Here, we demonstrate evidence of such a low-cost altruistic act in Escherichia coli bacteria, which express an abortive infection system (Abi) that responds to lethal phage attacks by causing infected cells to die together with the infecting phage. From an evolutionary perspective, the expression of an Abi system could reflect an altruistic act that allows infected bacteria to commit suicide in order to prevent parasite transmission to nearby relatives." https://lnkd.in/d53-z28 View in LinkedIn

CHAOS BEATS SMARTS. "Evolution copes better than intelligent, top-down design with the evolving constraints of a market landscape that is constantly shifting." https://lnkd.in/dbVEZAf View in LinkedIn

E COLI SUICIDE. "We investigated Escherichia coli responding to the attack of an obligately lytic phage by committing suicide in order to prevent parasite transmission to nearby relatives. We found that bacterial suicide provides large benefits to survivors at marginal costs to committers. The cost of suicide was low, because infected cells are moribund, rapidly dying upon phage infection, such that no more opportunity for reproduction remains." https://lnkd.in/d53-z28 View in LinkedIn

ALL OVER THE PLACE. "The bazaar is like evolution: messy, inefficient, and slow. Lots of bad ideas are tried; a lot of them stick around for as long as they provide more value than they subtract; and progress takes a long time. Just as the human body has components that are useless today (e.g., the coccyx), evolving software ecosystems always carry a lot useless baggage. That's how evolution works." https://lnkd.in/dbVEZAf View in LinkedIn

"ALTRUISM can evolve when relatedness is low: evidence from bacteria committing suicide upon phage infection. High relatedness among interacting individuals has generally been considered a precondition for the evolution of altruism. However, kin-selection theory also predicts the evolution of altruism when relatedness is low, as long as the cost of the altruistic act is minor compared with its benefit." https://lnkd.in/d53-z28 View in LinkedIn

VIRTUAL EVOLUTION. "Rather than remove an erroneous selection, evolution would just add a countercorrecting solution, or reroute the main event around the bad sector. The final formula had the appearance of being some miraculous Rube Goldberg collection of items that by some happy accident worked." https://lnkd.in/d3G_hCh View in LinkedIn

VALIDATION. "But the host will benefit from suicide, if by its death (and that of its parasite) the level of subsequent parasitism in its kin is reduced relative to that in non-kin. Here we report that pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) parasitized by the braconid wasp Aphidius ervi, exhibit apparent suicidal behaviour in response to both aphid alarm pheromone and approaching coccinellid (ladybird beetle) predators. We believe this to be the first convincing evidence in support of the host suicide hypothesis." https://lnkd.in/dnVKjrQ View in LinkedIn

SEX AND EFFICIENCY. "Evolutionary theory predicts that natural selection should be less efficient in asexually than in sexually reproducing organisms. Obligate asexuals are expected to adapt slowly to changing environments and to accumulate mildly deleterious mutations to their genomes, potentially explaining their typically short evolutionary lifespans." https://lnkd.in/dgGXaM6 View in LinkedIn

APHID ADAPTIVE SUICIDE. "The host suicide hypothesis, which derives from inclusive fitness theory, postulates that parasitized individuals in spatially aggregated populations consisting of close kin may actively enhance their probability of dying. The fitness cost associated with suicide becomes negligible when infection by a parasitoid causes the expected reproduction of the host to approach zero." https://lnkd.in/dnVKjrQ View in LinkedIn

INCREASED HOST FITNESS. "Host suicide will increase the inclusive fitness of the host if (1) the suicide prevents the maturation of the parasite; (2) the mature parasite is more likely to infect the host's kin than nonkin; and (3) the benefit to the host, in terms of the increased fitness of the kin, is greater than the cost of the suicide, measured in terms of the loss of the host's own reproductive fitness." https://lnkd.in/dzrwDbd View in LinkedIn