Month: September 2022

ALL NEW THINGS come from some kind of antecedent innovations; be they cultural, technological, or biological. Very few new things, if anything, arise from nowhere. Historical and evolutionary context is the fertile ground from which apparent novelty arises. A feather was developed for sexual attraction, and became later modified by trial-and-error for one of the great saltations -- flight. There is much tinkering in the box of castoffs and failed experiments. View in LinkedIn

"MUTATIONS create variation in the population, fuel evolution and cause genetic diseases." https://lnkd.in/dmDEwQ8 View in LinkedIn

"NEW GENES from non-coding sequence: Rather than an extremely rare occurrence, it is now evident that there is a relatively constant trickle of proto-genes released into the testing ground of natural selection." https://lnkd.in/dPqZs3m View in LinkedIn

SPECIATION DRIVER. "Evolution is the process by which all life on Earth has differentiated itself. It is what has separated whales from willows and butterflies from bacteria. Mutation drives this process by introducing occasional mistakes in gene sequences. These errors sometimes give an organism a selective advantage, and are thus passed down to later generations through natural selection." https://lnkd.in/dAgxYcj View in LinkedIn

EMERGENCE OF NEW GENES. "How new genes emerge and functionally diversify are very fundamental questions in biology, as new genes provide the raw material for evolutionary innovation that allows organisms to adapt, increase in complexity, and form new species." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

JUNK DNA TO NEW GENES. "De novo genes are usually defined as protein-coding genes that have evolved from scratch from previously non-coding DNA. There are significant challenges surrounding the accurate detection of de novo genes." https://lnkd.in/dPqZs3m View in LinkedIn

REFORMULATED GENES. "Many de novo genes have been discovered close to or overlapping older genes. This may reflect a reuse of pre-existing regulatory sequences." https://lnkd.in/dPqZs3m View in LinkedIn

GENERATION OF NOVELTY. "For many years, it had been considered extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that genes with no detectable homology could emerge. With the availability of the full genomic sequence of yeast, however, this picture changed. About one third of the entire set of genes in baker's yeast has no sequence similarity to genes from other organisms." (So-called orphan genes). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn

IMPROBABILITY OF NOVELTY. "The evolution of an entirely new gene without any functional progenitor has been regarded as an exceedingly rare and improbable event. Considering the vast number of possible protein species and the rather limited number of configurations found in biological systems, this notion might seem to make sense." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

PURGING NOVELTY. "Any random sequence generated by chance must end up as a stable polypeptide with a function accessible by selection or end up being purged from the genome by neutral mutational processes." Here is the great scrapheap of nature's genetic experiments. https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn