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WELL STUDIED. “CI is the most commonly observed reproductive manipulation induced by Wolbachia, and its evolution has been investigated for over 60 years through phenotypic experiments and evolutionary models.” (CI = cytoplasmic incompatibility). https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

ABORTION GENES IDENTIFIED. “Recent work on the Wolbachia strains wMel and wPip from Drosophila melanogaster and Culex pipiens has found that the bacterial genes cifA and cifB are sufficient to induce CI.” (CI = cytoplasmic incompatibility). https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

HYPOTHESIS. “An alternative scenario for the evolution of the white hole is that the outflow of negative energy across the horizon lasts only for a limited retarded time, too short for the Ford-Roman bound to be violated, after which mass of the white hole becomes constant at a larger, but still Planck-scale, value until the matter shell emerges.” https://lnkd.in/dUKnus8 View in LinkedIn

QUESTION. “Does the initial outflow of negative energy from the white hole continue for the entire lifetime of the white hole, increasing the mass of the white hole up to the original mass of the black hole when the bouncing shell of matter that formed the black hole emerges and the white hole disappears?” https://lnkd.in/dUKnus8 View in LinkedIn

GEOMETRIC CONTORTIONS. “It is not surprising that energy flow does not follow such a geodesic through the transition from the black hole to the white hole, where the geometry is changing rapidly from collapse to expansion.” https://lnkd.in/dUKnus8 View in LinkedIn

“PHYSICS is full of opposites. For every action, there’s a reaction; every positive charge has a negative; every magnetic north pole has a south pole. Matter’s opposite number is antimatter. And for black holes, meet white holes. Black holes are notorious objects that suck in everything around them. Famously, not even light can escape their awesome gravity. White holes, in contrast, blow out a constant stream of matter and light – so much so that nothing can enter them.” https://lnkd.in/djSRsBX View in LinkedIn

These seemingly fragile gems withstand storms, dirt, predators and pollution, and are tough enough to migrate long distances. View in LinkedIn

LIKE GENETICS VS EMBRYOLOGY. “Synthetic biology presents a challenge to traditional accounts of biology: Whereas traditional biology emphasizes the evolvability, variability, and heterogeneity of living organisms, synthetic biology envisions a future of homogeneous, humanly engineered biological systems that may be combined in modular fashion.” https://lnkd.in/dhkrmJx View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on the cunning strategy of the bacteria Wolbachia which has enabled it to colonize half of the insect species in the world. The ability of symbionts and parasites to enact sophisticated strategies on their hosts makes one suspect that more than chance is at play, but when nature gambles at such high rates over geological time, even slim probabilities can become realities. It is a game of sheer numbers against the odds of chance. View in LinkedIn

FINE PRINT. “Furthermore, even if the symbiont retained the ability to rescue the cross, for example, if genes are swapped among paralogous pairs within the genome, the pair of genes might be eliminated in the long term if it generated self-incompatibility when transferred to a new genome.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn