Category: Uncategorized

HIGHLY UNLIKELY EVENT. "A sudden transition in a system from an inanimate state to the living state—defined on the basis of present day living organisms—would constitute a highly unlikely event hardly predictable from physical laws." https://lnkd.in/dS2NY3q View in LinkedIn

CONVERGENT. "Simon Conway Morris argues that convergence is the stronger force – the principles of engineering dictate that the same, or similar, solutions will emerge repeatedly." https://lnkd.in/dtE8XQK View in LinkedIn

CONTINGENT. "Steven Jay Gould advocated the contingency of evolution: wind back the clock, and life will evolve again along radically different lines." https://lnkd.in/dtE8XQK View in LinkedIn

FREAK ACCIDENT. "Forty years ago, Jacques Monod published his seminal work, Chance and Necessity (Monod, 1971). Monod's bleak perspective, that the origin of life was a freak accident, and that we are almost certainly alone in an empty universe, was opposed by Christian de Duve, who has argued that life is a "cosmic imperative", and as such will arise throughout the universe." https://lnkd.in/dtE8XQK View in LinkedIn

LAUGHINGLY IMPROBABLE. "The combinatorial stringing together of all of the steps between LECA and Macropus rufus (the red kangaroo), Trichomonas vaginalis, or Mozart is, indeed, laughably improbable. Surely, if life’s tape was rewound, none of these would recur." (LECA = Last eukaryotic common ancestor). https://lnkd.in/d6GwkCt View in LinkedIn

ANALYSIS PARALYSIS. "The scientific method can be paralyzed by problems that require understanding the very improbable occurrences that result from very, very large numbers of throws of the dice." https://lnkd.in/dv77eVE View in LinkedIn

SOMATIC HYPERMUTATION. "In response to an assault by foreign organisms, peripheral B cells can change their antibody affinity and isotype by somatically mutating their genomic DNA." https://lnkd.in/dUEkqmr View in LinkedIn

THE BIG ONE. "How could a chemical sludge spontaneously become a rose, even with billions of years to try?" https://lnkd.in/dv77eVE View in LinkedIn

SIMPLICITY TO COMPLEXITY (AGAIN). “Our genomes encode a limited number of antibody genes, which are insufficient to generate antibodies against the wide variety of foreign pathogens encountered from the external environment. SHM enables our immune system to expand the limited diversity encoded within our genomes to the billions of antibody specificities required to defend ourselves against external pathogens." (SHM = somatic hypermutation). https://lnkd.in/dQ6QXSG View in LinkedIn

INSCRUTABLE. "So, at least for now, the cell is beyond our ability to understand it." https://lnkd.in/dv77eVE View in LinkedIn