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"NEW GENES provide the raw material for evolutionary innovation that allows organisms to adapt, increase in complexity, and form new species. An organism can acquire new genes through at least three distinct, but potentially overlapping, mechanisms." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

MISSING DATA. "Despite impressive advances in molecular biology and genome sequencing of species, our analysis emphasises that we still lack very fundamental data about the biomass of different types of life on Earth and their distribution, which is essential for refining estimates of the information content of the biosphere." A very, very long way to go. https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

TOTAL GLOBAL BIOMASS. "Although the cell numbers in eukaryotes are approximately two to five orders of magnitude lower than the number of prokaryotes (animals by biome: 4.11606 × 10(25) cells; animals by biomass: 1.28907 × 10(26) cells; plants: 2.44730 × 10(28) cells, compared to prokaryotes: 5 × 10(30) cells, the average genome size in prokaryotes is 3.2147 Mb, compared to the higher value in plants (5,958 Mb) and animals (4,456 Mb)." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

GENETIC STREAMLINING of microorganisms complicates the purely quantitative argument for global gene contribution and overlooks the efficiencies of symbiotic or parasitic genetic outsourcing. View in LinkedIn

SURPRISING SIMILARITY. "Comparing the quantity of DNA in microorganisms, plants, and animals shows that there is a remarkable similarity in size of the contributions, within two orders of magnitude. This similarity is surprising, given that prokaryotes evolved at least 3 billion years before plants and animals. The likely reason for this is the larger genome size in eukaryotes." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

IMPACT OF EXTINCTIONS. "Although statistics such as the destruction of 75% of life at the end-Cretaceous boundary are impressive, the true importance of this to the biosphere’s information content and processing power would depend on the genome sizes of extinct organisms, what influence the extinction had on microbial populations, and the effects on DNA transcription rates (altered by changed metabolic states in a stressed biosphere)." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

MASS EXTINCTIONS. "An information-based view of the biosphere may provide a way to consider the changing complexity of the biosphere through time. For example, mass extinctions can be considered to be similar to physical hard drive damage in a computer." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR SOPHISTICATION or baggage? View in LinkedIn

VAST AMOUNT OF GLOBAL GENETIC DATA. "Storing the total amount of information encoded in DNA in the biosphere, 5.3 × 10(31) megabases (Mb), would require approximately 10(21) supercomputers with the average storage capacity of the world’s four most powerful supercomputers." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

DNA EDITING is a critical part of replication for non-virus or non-bacterial swarm lifestyles. If the replicated genetic information contains errors from the process, these errors in the genetic code will often have serious or lethal consequences. And given the frequency and speed of DNA replication, highly efficient proof-reading is necessary. With increased molecular sophistication comes the need for another layer of complexity. The eukaryotic dilemma. View in LinkedIn