Month: September 2022

COMPARATIVE PHYLOGENY. “It is a truism that the study of evolution requires a comparative approach. If we want to reconstruct and learn about extinct common ancestors, the study of one extant relative is not nearly enough. Evolutionary principles emerge only when we look at a plethora of forms in phylogenetic context.” http://extavourlab.com/pdfs/papers/2016_Extavour_CurrOpGenetDev.pdf View in LinkedIn

TOOLS EXIST. “More than ever before in the history of the biological sciences, we have the power to not only describe diversity but also to understand mechanistically its genetic, cellular and developmental origins at an unprecedented level of resolution.” http://extavourlab.com/pdfs/papers/2016_Extavour_CurrOpGenetDev.pdf View in LinkedIn

VOILA! “All forms of functional genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, etc. approaches should work in your organism of choice, as long as you can collect/breed/obtain specimens in sufficient numbers. Single cell sequencing techniques only require good dissociation, transcriptome library preparation and sequencing protocols and, voila, a first glimpse into cellular diversity and the evolution of cell types is within reach.” http://extavourlab.com/pdfs/papers/2016_Extavour_CurrOpGenetDev.pdf View in LinkedIn

THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS are taken from an exceptionally interesting paper, and worth the slow start as it builds to the main points. Be patient. https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

PERTURBATION BIOLOGY. “A common definition of systems biology is the study of a given biological system by (a) the perturbation of a property of that system, (b) the measurement of resulting gene, protein, and pathway responses, (c) the integration of these data, and (d) the ultimate modeling of these data to describe the system as well as its response to perturbation.” Exceptional paper. https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

HOLISTIC INVESTIGATIONS. “Fundamentally, the essence of systems biology is the study of interactions between parts of the system using experimental and computational methods.” https://bmcsystbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-0509-8-S2-S1 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE this weekend abstracts a fascinating article about how simple chemicals can self-assemble into complex architectures (supramolecular chemistry), using the weak bond information within molecules, and programming a variety of outputs, leading to truly emergent phenomena at higher levels of complexity. It seems that we have greatly underestimated so-called simple inanimate matter. https://lnkd.in/d88ypEi View in LinkedIn

INCREASING COMPLEXITY. “As the wind of time blows into the sails of space, the unfolding of the universe nurtures the evolution of matter under the pressure of information. From divided to condensed and on to organized, living, and thinking matter, the path is toward an increase in complexity through self-organization.” https://lnkd.in/dN969hA View in LinkedIn

ROAD TO COMPLEXITY. “Thus emerges the prime question set to science, in particular to chemistry, the science of the structure and transformation of matter: how does matter become complex? What are the steps and the processes that lead from the elementary particle to the thinking organism, the (present!) entity of highest complexity?” https://lnkd.in/dN969hA View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR INFORMATION. “Supramolecular chemistry has paved the way toward apprehending chemistry as an information science through the implementation of the concept of molecular information with the aim of gaining progressive control over the spatial (structural) and temporal (dynamic) features of matter and over its complexification through self-organization, the drive to life.” https://lnkd.in/dN969hA View in LinkedIn