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EVOLUTION AS COMPLEXITY ACCUMULATION. "Recent evolutionary reconstructions challenge this notion. Two notable examples are the reconstruction of the complex archaeal ancestor and the intron-rich ancestor of eukaryotes. In both cases, evolution in most of the lineages was apparently dominated by extensive loss of genes and introns, respectively." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH. "We are a plague on the Earth...Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9815862/Humans-are-plague-on-Earth-Attenborough.html View in LinkedIn

THE COMPLEXIFICATION PARADIGM. "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

ACCUMULATING COMPLEXITY. "For if there is any purpose legible at all in the millennia of human history, it is in the unflagging persistence with which we add to the complexity of the universe." This has been the pervasive mantra since Darwin. https://lnkd.in/edrARjk View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE follows on from the past weekend series on convergent evolution, but this time focuses on reductive evolution, where there is a tendency to simplify. We always assume that complexification is the norm in evolution, and that simpler creatures are less evolved. It is becoming clear that neither assumption is true. View in LinkedIn

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ANIMAL GROWTH ENHANCER. "60% of antibiotic use in nursery-age pigs is for disease prevention or growth promotion. ~60% of antibiotic use in grower/finisher pigs is for growth promotion." HGT in animal guts fosters antibiotic resistance genes." Regulatory agencies have completely betrayed society. https://lnkd.in/eEaXmjy View in LinkedIn

RICH MELTING POT. "Gene transfer is common in the gut. A broad assessment of lateral gene transfer events between bacteria from a multitude of environments showed that human-associated bacteria are 25 times more likely to exchange genetic material than bacteria from other environments, and that closely related human-associated bacteria exhibit horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in 20% to 40% of all pairwise bacterial comparisons." http://www.jci.org/articles/view/72333 View in LinkedIn

GUT MICROBE DENSITY. "The intestinal ecosystem boasts the highest density of microbes of all known environments, with 10(11)–10(12) cells per gram of gastrointestinal content; opportunities for HGT by conjugation are afforded by the intimate proximity of microorganisms." (HGT = Horizontal Gene Transfer). http://www.jci.org/articles/view/72333 View in LinkedIn

WIDESPREAD ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE. "A study that described culturable microbes from over 600 individuals revealed that the majority of these individuals harbored gut communities in which at least 10% of members were resistant to a single antibiotic, and over a third carried microbes that exhibited multidrug resistance phenotypes." http://www.jci.org/articles/view/72333 View in LinkedIn