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TRAIT SIZE REGULATION. "The findings we describe bear on an old and still unanswered question in biology, namely, how the absolute and relative sizes of traits are regulated. Numerous experiments on regeneration and transplantation have shown that the final size of appendages and internal organs is regulated autonomously, within the structure itself; size regulation of body parts typically requires no external control." http://www.pnas.org/content/95/7/3685.full View in LinkedIn

TOUGH OLD IDEA. "The concept that, during development, different parts of an organism could be in competition with each other is old, and intuitive, but has proven difficult to demonstrate in practice. One reason for this difficulty may be that resource allocation tradeoffs are difficult to measure in organisms that grow and feed continuously, because changes in demands on developmental resources can be met by changes in resource acquisition." View in LinkedIn

RELATIVE GROWTH. "When a limiting resource is shared among several body parts, the degree to which it is used by one part diminishes its availability to another. Such a resource could then constitute a signaling mechanism that controls the relative growth of body parts." http://www.pnas.org/content/95/7/3685.full View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE deals with the issue of competition for resources between cells and organs of the same organism, and how resources are allocated between competing interests. This perspective of multicellular creatures being a community of cells turns our world view upside down, but at the same time makes perfect sense. It is the microcosm of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, with the overlay of the priority for the survival of the organism as a surrogate for the survival of the population. View in LinkedIn

TRAIT ALLOCATION. "Competition among body parts in the development and evolution of insect morphology. We show in two very different systems, butterfly wings and beetle horns, that experimentally induced changes in the allocation of developmental resources to one trait produces compensatory changes in the relative sizes of other traits." https://lnkd.in/dk8W49b View in LinkedIn

EU member states to vote on near-total neonicotinoids ban http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43910536 View in LinkedIn

SELECTION OF THE FITTEST. "We argue that competition between genetically identical cells could improve the fitness of a multicellular organism by directing fitter cells to the germ line or by eliminating unfit cells, and that cell-competition mechanisms have been conserved in multicellular organisms. We propose that competition between genetically identical or highly similar units could have similar selective advantages at higher organizational levels, such as societies." https://lnkd.in/dXdwAzF View in LinkedIn

NUTRIENT COMPETITION. "To grow faster, plants must allocate more resources, primarily nitrogen, to photosynthesis. Nitrogen is one of the most important limiting resources for plant growth in nature, and most leaf nitrogen is allocated to photosynthesis. Small changes in nitrogen allocation can greatly influence light-saturated photosynthetic rate (Pmax) and photosynthetic nitrogen-use efficiency (PNUE), and therefore plant performance. Leaf nitrogen that is not allocated to photosynthesis is generally used structurally in cell walls, a component of plant defense and chemical defenses." https://lnkd.in/dM3QBWR View in LinkedIn

SINKS TRUMP SOURCES. "A semelparous plant dies because its sink tissues kill its source organs by a kind of starvation, by induction of senescence in response to nutrient diversion or by export of a ‘death hormone'." (Semelparous organisms have only one reproductive episode before death). https://lnkd.in/dPac2Jv View in LinkedIn

NUTRIENT SOURCES. "Organs that supply the precursors for sink metabolism are sources. Sources and sinks communicate through the vascular system. During development of the endosperm of cereal grains and the parenchyma of potato tubers, large amounts of starch are accumulated. These organs are supplied via the phloem with assimilated C mostly fixed by current photosynthesis." (C = carbon), https://lnkd.in/dPac2Jv View in LinkedIn