Year: 2022

TURNING POINT. “In a 1961 review article, Jacob and Monod emphasize that operon-like control mechanisms may be a universal part of gene regulation.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

EPIGENETICS. “John Moore: Embryologists, he wrote, were adamant that non-genetic phenomena could influence what the identical genes actually do, but the geneticists were set against it. "This point of view, which once would have been reasonable to an embryologist but not to a geneticist, now seems reasonable to both." https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

VICTORY LAP. “Indeed, reading Moore, one gets the impression that the lac operon model was a victory of the embryological view over the genetic.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

FROM LEFT FIELD. “A generation ago, few embryologists or geneticists would have predicted that a synthesis of their fields would be made possible by studies on the bacterium Escherichia coli. But this microscopic creature, with no embryology of its own, has shown a way.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

SYNERGY AT LAST. “A decade from now it may be difficult to distinguish between a geneticist and an embryologist, as they advance their science beyond what each might independently achieve.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

THE UNION. “The year 1963 also saw the first experiments using transcription inhibitors to demonstrate the importance of differential gene transcription in the embryo. The molecularization of embryology had begun.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this second and last weekend on a fascinating historical vignette on the struggles of embryologists to see eye-to-eye with geneticists. This illustrates an emotional component to science that many people may not realize runs deep, and that science is not just the logical advance of new ideas, but is largely governed by the same features that govern most human enterprises. https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

DEATH IS PRUNING. “Taking the characteristic lifetime of a bacterium as 10(3) seconds, in a million years (3 × 10(13) seconds), the total number of living organisms would be approximately 10(42) -10(43), and for a billion years, this number would be 10(45) - 10(46).” https://lnkd.in/da7dRTF View in LinkedIn

Fern frond undersides with early summer spore pods already ripe. View in LinkedIn

DE SITTER SPACETIME. “A class of concrete examples of the holographic principle at work involves so-called antide Sitter spacetimes. The original de Sitter spacetime is a model universe first obtained by Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter in 1917 as a solution of Einstein's equations, including the repulsive force known as the cosmological constant.” https://lnkd.in/draqjTW View in LinkedIn