linkedin post 2019-03-23 04:54:23

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BEYOND THE ONION. "Importantly, the comparison is not restricted to onions versus humans. It could as easily be between pufferfish and lungfish, which differ by ∼350-fold, or members of the genus Allium, which have more than a 4-fold range in genome size that is not the result of polyploidy." https://lnkd.in/eT5V5Xc View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-03-21 06:00:58

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INNOVATIVE SURVIVAL. "The swift and drastic size reductions of those first runs startled Ray, but even more remarkable were the survival strategies these variants encoded. The 45- and 51-byte creatures, it turned out, were not worms but bona fide parasitic viruses, achieving their leanness by borrowing reproductive code from larger programs when they needed to copy themselves." https://lnkd.in/edrARjk View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-03-21 05:59:45

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LET FREE. "Once loosed into the Tierra environment installed on Ray's laptop, the creature's offspring quickly spread to the new world's every corner, within minutes displaying the evolutionary transformations that would "write" Ray's organisms from then on." https://lnkd.in/edrARjk View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-03-24 05:20:53

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“INFORMATION does not change whether it is encoded in bits, in nucleotides, or is scratched on a rock: Information is substrate-independent. But information is also, mathematically speaking, extremely rare. The probability of finding a sequence encoding a sizable chunk of information by chance is so small that for practical purposes it is zero." https://lnkd.in/d-TfSCW View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-03-24 05:14:55

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NO EXPLANATION NEEDED. "Second, transposability itself ensures the survival of the transposed element, regardless of effects on organismal phenotype or evolutionary adaptability (unless these are sufficiently negative). Thus no other explanation for the origin and maintenance of transposable elements is necessary. https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2019-03-24 05:12:18

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MOBILE ELEMENTS. "First, DNAs without immediate phenotypic benefit are of no immediate selective advantage to their possessor. Excess DNA should represent an energetic burden, and some of the activities of transposable elements are frankly destructive. Evolution is not anticipatory; structures do not evolve because they may later prove useful." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn
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