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RADICAL NEW VIEW. "Genome reduction as the dominant mode of evolution. A common belief is that evolution generally proceeds towards greater complexity at both the organismal and the genomic level, numerous examples of reductive evolution of parasites and symbionts notwithstanding. However, recent evolutionary reconstructions challenge this notion." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

SIMPLICITY NOT SELECTED. "Most processes in eukaryotes generally evolve toward complexity, presumably because complexity provides more regulatory opportunities and perhaps also because there is no selective pressure to enforce simplicity." Not always true. https://lnkd.in/d8Qr_bk View in LinkedIn

MANTRA OF COMPLEXIFICATION. "The textbook depiction of the evolution of life on earth is that of an ascent toward a steadily increasing organismal complexity: from primitive protocells to prokaryotic cells to the eukaryotic cell to multicellular organisms to animals to humans, the crowning achievement of the entire history of life." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE. It is generally thought that evolution is the march towards greater structural and genetic complexity. Not quite so simple. Genetic outsourcing during genetic streamlining is deceptive. It actually increases genetic complexity, and amplifies gene capabilities by appropriation of host genes during the symbiotic or parasitic lifestyle, not just being genetic simplification or genome reduction. Remember the reversal of polyploidy during plant evolution? View in LinkedIn

"MALE SELF-SACRIFICE”, or apparent male cooperation with female cannibalism, is part of male copulatory behavior in several spider species, and in some insects. One study also reported that males of the spider Argiope aurantia spontaneously die when they copulate." http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/are-internal-death-promoting-mechanisms-ever-adaptive-2329-9002.1000113.pdf View in LinkedIn

KIN FITNESS. "Pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) that are parasitized by the Braconid wasp Aphidius ervi drop from the host plant, causing their own death. These insects live in groups of close kin, and their death prevents their body from producing parasites that would then attack their siblings. Death therefore increases the individual’s inclusive fitness, or equivalently, increases the fitness of the kin group." http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/are-internal-death-promoting-mechanisms-ever-adaptive-2329-9002.1000113.pdf View in LinkedIn

PLANTS. "Plant cells, that have, in addition to mitochondria, another endosymbiotic organelle of cyanobacterial origin, the chloroplast. Do chloroplasts play a role in the regulation of plant programmed cell death? And since an AP-ATPase, a metacaspase and a TIR domain have been identified in cyanobacteria (as in some other bacterial lineages), did plants acquire their putative homologues of the apoptotic machinery through this endosymbiotic process?" http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

CLUSTERING VS ENCODING. "The mitochondria appear to be a locus of clustering of several of the main players in the execution and regulation of programmed cell death. Interestingly, all these players, whether located inside the mitochondria or on its outer surface, are encoded by nuclear genes, and none by mitochondrial genes." (Streamlining of endosymbiont ensured this when the engulfed bacteria transferred most of its genes to the host nucleus). http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

START OF THE STORY. "In favorable environmental conditions, Bacillus subtilis undergoes vegetative growth through symmetrical cell division. In adverse environmental conditions, such as nutrient shortage, Bacillus subtilis undergoes a complex developmental program whose initiation depends, as mentioned above, on cell density and on the concentration of released quorum factors. When initiated, this program begins with a process of asymmetric cell division." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

DRUNKARD'S WALK. "Gould argued that the average complexity of life forms has barely increased over the course of the history of life, even as the upper bound of complexity was being pushed upwards, perhaps for purely stochastic reasons, under a “drunkard's walk” model of evolution." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn