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EPIGENETIC RESPONSES. "Pargellis envisages chips with simple instruction sets, whose programs dynamically mutate in response to environmental stimuli." https://lnkd.in/dJPTA3e View in LinkedIn

SIMPLIFYING EFFICIENCY. "Pargellis found that on average, a self-replicating sequence of instructions would spontaneously arise after about 400 generations. Initially, such 'self-reps' were often unnecessarily complex, and contained portions of code which performed no useful task, or were skipped over. This is directly analagous to the 'introns' and 'exons' found in real biological genes, where useful genetic information is interspersed with patches of nonsense." https://lnkd.in/dJPTA3e View in LinkedIn

SIMPLICITY AND ABUNDANCE. "One reason for Amoeba's fecundity is that its life-forms have a simple structure. Pergellis has carefully designed his instruction set such that it is possible to create a self-replicating cell with only 5 instructions." https://lnkd.in/dJPTA3e View in LinkedIn

FINITE SIZE RANGE. "Proteins exist in a finite range of sizes with a limited amino acid alphabet. We find that these restrictions set an intrinsic limit to designing protein interfaces that can bind selectively to target proteins, while remaining relatively repulsive to all other protein interfaces." https://lnkd.in/eTyvTV7 View in LinkedIn

GENE SWAPS. "The horizontal transfer of entire metabolic pathways or part thereof might have had a special role during the early stages of cellular evolution." https://lnkd.in/dxwrfTm View in LinkedIn

ONLY 20 AMINO ACIDS MAKE PROTEINS. "There are 22 standard amino acids, but only 21 are found in eukaryotes. Of the 22, 20 are directly encoded by the universal genetic code. Humans can synthesize 11 of these 20 from each other or from other molecules of intermediary metabolism. The other 9 must be consumed in the diet." https://lnkd.in/eeMC3wc View in LinkedIn

PATCHWORK HYPOTHESIS. "Concerning the mechanisms of pathway assembly, both the analysis of completely sequenced genomes and directed evolution experiments strongly support the patchwork hypothesis, according to which metabolic pathways have been assembled through the recruitment of primitive enzymes that could react with a wide range of chemically related substrates." Bolt-on exaptations. https://lnkd.in/dNeshTu View in LinkedIn

ONLY FOUR NUCLEOTIDES BUILD DNA. "There are basically four nucleotide bases, which make up the DNA. Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Thymine (T) and Cytosine(C)." (You knew that, but I am building my case)." https://lnkd.in/e7TPGqw View in LinkedIn

PROTEIN FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY. "Moonlighting has since been demonstrated for a variety of glycolytic, TCA cycle, and other metabolic enzymes. It is now clear that moonlighting represents an important source of protein diversity in multicellular eukaryotes and is relevant for certain human diseases." https://lnkd.in/d59Qmdd View in LinkedIn

UNDIRECTED EVOLUTION. "Amoeba draws its inspiration from the 'Tierra' simulator developed by artificial life researcher Thomas Ray, but with one crucial difference: in Tierra, life-forms must be manually introduced into the soup; in Amoeba, the soup is seeded with random instructions, and life-forms spontaneously appear, as if by magic." https://lnkd.in/dJPTA3e View in LinkedIn