Month: September 2022

STANDARD ASSUMPTIONS. "When scientists think about the replication of information in chemistry, they usually have in mind something akin to what happens in living organisms when DNA gets copied." https://lnkd.in/dF6far5 View in LinkedIn

MUTATION. "The ability to mutate in a discrete or quantized way, without frequent reversion, may be an additional requirement for Darwinian evolution." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

SELF-REPLICATION. "For nucleic acids, the story likely begins with simple chemical replication, perhaps of the form A + B → T, in which T serves as a template for the joining of A and B." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

FITNESS AND SURVIVAL. "Molecular variants capable of faster replication would come to dominate a population, and the development of cycles in which templates could foster one another’s replication would have led to increasingly complex replicators and from thence to the initial genomes." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR PARASITES OF REPLICATORS. "It is likely that such replicators would have been plagued by molecular parasites, which would have been passively replicated by the RNA world machinery without contributing to it." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

SOME VIRTUES OF BOXES. "These molecular parasites would have been a major driver for the development of compartmentalization/cellularization, as more robust compartments could have outcompeted parasite-ridden compartments." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR OUTSOURCING. "The eventual outsourcing of metabolic functions (including the replication of nucleic acids) to more competent protein enzymes would complete the journey from an abiotic world to the molecular biology we see today." http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar200325v View in LinkedIn

NOT SUFFICIENT. "Just having a small molecule that replicates itself is not … ultimately very complex." https://lnkd.in/dQu8XRT View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE deals with a platyhelminthes called planaria, a common free-living flatworm. Remarkable for its regenerative powers, this humble creature caused a stir when a publication suggested that trained flatworms, when ground up and fed to untrained flatworms, could accelerate learning, calling for professor hamburgers. Enjoy this historical event that continues to unfold today. View in LinkedIn

PLANARIAN VIDEO, showing this charming flatworm in action. It is dynamic, curious, and beautiful. Hardly simple. https://lnkd.in/dBvzR5N View in LinkedIn