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SCIENTIFIC EFFICIENCY. "If science was more efficient it would be better placed to help solve society’s problems. One way to make science more efficient is through automation. Automation was the driving force behind much of the 19th and 20th century progress, and this is likely to continue." https://lnkd.in/dMfcK8Q View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends contemplating horizontal gene transfer. The world of microbes is so different from the eukaryotic world, and this is strongly highlighted by the free flow of genes between these creatures, and as we will see next weekend, between microbes and eukaryotes. Horizontal gene transfer in microbes finds its equivalent in eukaryotic sex, serving to fresh the genome from bad mutations and to be a fountain of genetic innovation. View in LinkedIn

ROBOT-HUMAN SCIENCE TEAMS. "Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories. Because biological organisms are so complex it is important that the details of biological experiments are recorded in great detail. This is difficult and irksome for human scientists, but easy for Robot Scientists." https://lnkd.in/dMfcK8Q View in LinkedIn

GENE INTAKE. "However, the demonstration that at least in some bacteria the ingested DNA is protected against degradation, thus preventing its use as a nucleotide source and conversely facilitating HGT, implies that, at least in part, natural competence evolved as a gene transfer mechanism." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

OUTPERFORMED. "We built and tested a detailed logical model (involving genes, proteins and metabolites) of the aromatic amino acid synthesis pathway. In biological experiments that automatically reconstruct parts of this model, we show that an intelligent experiment selection strategy is competitive with human performance and significantly outperforms, with a cost decrease of 3-fold and 100-fold (respectively), both cheapest and random-experiment selection." https://lnkd.in/d_c-WZa View in LinkedIn

DNA PUMPS. "Diverse bacteria and archaea are competent for natural transformation that is mediated by dedicated DNA intake pumps. These pumps can be legitimately considered devices for utilization of environmental DNA as a source of nucleotides (simply put, food), with HGT being a fringe benefit." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

DERIVING GLYCOLYSIS. "The biological system that the researchers used to test ABE is glycolysis, the primary process that produces energy in a living cell. The ability to generate mathematical equations from scratch is what sets ABE apart from Adam, the robot scientist developed by Ross King and his colleagues at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth." https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

SEA OF DNA. "HGT might be considered a by-product of the presence of substantial amounts of DNA in the environment combined with genetic processes such as transformation and bacteriophage infection that leads to gene transduction." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

MACHINE SCIENCE. "We have confirmed Adam’s conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam’s research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge." (Ross King). https://lnkd.in/dJJ9HmD View in LinkedIn

SCIENCE BY ROBOTS. "The scientists in Britain, led by Ross D. King, a professor at Aberystwyth University, built a robotic scientist they named Adam. Using artificial intelligence, it came up with a hypothesis about genes in baker’s yeast and the enzymes produced by the genes. It then designed and ran experiments to test its hypothesis. Using the results, it revised its hypothesis and ran more experiments before arriving at its conclusions." https://lnkd.in/djSTtXn View in LinkedIn