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Country loaves in Catalonia. View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends looking at biology as a set of processes rather than a set of things. There is a sea change going on in the bigger context, from quantum physics all the way through biology to geology, namely, that things, and events or processes, are deeply entwined and interconnected; the idea of doing a chemical reaction in a test tube to replicate the origin of life in the early Earth is now seen as ridiculous, because it ignores geochemical and geophysical influences, which are messy and complicated. Take anything out of its embedded context and it is an artifice. View in LinkedIn

GENES DO NOT ACT ALONE. “DNA does not ‘self-replicate’, as it is sometimes claimed, but is completely dependent for its replication on the participation of an intricate molecular ‘machinery’. To think of replication, and by implication of reproduction, as analogous with copying is to abstract away the causality and materiality of the connection between parent and offspring, reducing this connection to an essentially informational relation.” (Noble: genes aline do nothing.) https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

BEYOND REPLICANTS. “Biological reproduction— unlike photocopying, in which only a re-production of information is required— involves a degree of material continuity between the original and the descendant. Indeed, in the replication of DNA, new double helices are partially constituted from the material of the old double helices. Treating replication as copying has the inadvertent consequence of diverting attention from the causal process that generates it.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

DENIS NOBLE REVISITED. “What these genomic activities indicate is that, far from there being a one-way control of the cell by the genome, as is still sometimes imagined, the genome is in constant two-way interaction with its cellular context and beyond. The persistence of both, in fact, depends on their interrelations. In short, where once we saw a genome as a set of discrete units or things mechanically controlling their wider environment, now we see interactions of a complex dynamic entity with its even more complex surroundings.” (The Music of Life). https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

GENE DOGMA REFUTED. “This traditional picture has, however, been very widely rejected. The development of most traits is now understood to involve features widely distributed across the genome as well as influences from many aspects of the external environment. This has led to growing doubts about the ontological significance of genes as discrete components of genomes, which in turn has prompted a more direct focus on the genome itself. The genome, far from being a fixed source of developmental information, is now increasingly seen as a thoroughly processual entity.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

PLANT MEMORY. "In plants one may distinguish two types. There are linear pathways from reception of signals and propagation of effectors to a type of memory that may be described by terms such as learning, habituation or priming." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1438-8677.2012.00674.x/abstract View in LinkedIn

MEMORY BASIS. "All memory functions have molecular bases, namely in signal reception and transduction, and in storage and recall of information. Thus, at all levels of organisation living organisms have some kind of memory." https://lnkd.in/didU-Wa View in LinkedIn

A very soft fiber resistant to mites. View in LinkedIn