Year: 2022

STUCK OR BETTER OFF? "Why have not prokaryotes evolved complex multicellularity?" https://lnkd.in/dNEtvR8 View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTE AND MULTICELLULAR EQUIVALENCY. "According to multi-level theory, evolutionary transitions require mediating conflicts between lower-level units in favour of the higher-level unit. By this view, the origin of eukaryotes and the origin of multicellularity would seem largely equivalent." https://lnkd.in/dNEtvR8 View in LinkedIn

SECOND BOTHERSOME ISSUE. "Yet, eukaryotes evolved only once in the history of life, whereas multicellular eukaryotes have evolved many times." https://lnkd.in/dNEtvR8 View in LinkedIn

MULTICELLULARITY. "Multicellularity has evolved independently at least 46 times, including in some prokaryotes, like cyanobacteria, myxobacteria, actinomycetes, Magnetoglobus multicellularis or Methanosarcina. However, complex multicellular organisms evolved only in six eukaryotic groups: animals, fungi, brown algae, red algae, green algae, and land plants." https://lnkd.in/dCyD_7R View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE deals with snowflakes. A snowflake is not a glacier, but both are made of ice. Yesterday evening I stood on the magnificent Charles Bridge in Prague, where Kepler in 1610 (a mere 406 years ago) on this very bridge had a snowflake alight on his coat and launched him into a treatise on the six-fold symmetry of snowflakes published a year later. A salute across time to this magnificent thinker. https://lnkd.in/dGtMwAp View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn

KEPLER'S BRIDGE MOMENT. "When a snowflake alighted on Kepler’s coat as he crossed the Charles Bridge in Prague, he marveled at its perfect six-cornered symmetry." This led him to search nature for analogous structures. Read this lovely thought journey. http://www.keplersdiscovery.com/SixCornered.html View in LinkedIn

SIX CORNERED SNOWFLAKE. "In naming his essay, Kepler consciously played with words and made a pun with the word nix: In Latin, the language in which he composed the essay, the word means "snowflake," but in Low German, Kepler's native tongue, it means "nothing." At its core, the essay functions as a meditation on the nature of substance: if a snowflake, crafted of water vapor, melts momentarily, is it anything at all?" http://www.keplersdiscovery.com/SixCornered.html View in LinkedIn

KEPLER'S CONJECTURE. "Yet in the end, Kepler is defeated by the snowflake's ornate form and plate-like shape. He realizes that although the packing of spheres creates regular patterns, they are not necessarily hexagonal or flat, let alone as ramified and ornamented as that of the snowflake. His failure to explain the regularity of the snowflake is no disgrace, for not until the 1980s was this seen to be a consequence of branching growth instabilities biased by the hexagonal crystal symmetry of ice." https://lnkd.in/dX5WYMA View in LinkedIn

QUESTION OF SCALE. " ""One water molecule is not fluid" "One gold atom is not metallic" "One neuron is not conscious" "One amino acid is not alive."" "(Jochen Fromm). https://lnkd.in/dYUrQb3 View in LinkedIn