Year: 2022

SIMPLICITY BENEATH. "Throughout the natural and artificial world one observes phenomena of great complexity...research in physics and to some extent biology and other fields have shown that the basic components of many systems are quite simple. It is now a crucial problem for many areas of science to elucidate the mathematical mechanisms by which large numbers of such simple components, acting together, can produce behavior of the great complexity observed." https://lnkd.in/dc_82je View in LinkedIn

"THE KOCH SNOWFLAKE (also known as the Koch curve, Koch star, or Koch island) is a mathematical curve and one of the earliest fractal curves to have been described. The progression for the area of the snowflake converges to 8/5 times the area of the original triangle, while the progression for the snowflake's perimeter diverges to infinity. Consequently, the snowflake has a finite area bounded by an infinitely long line." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS my homage to Kepler's moment on the Charles Bridge in Prague. The mathematics of tiling tessellations from MC Escher transition through Kepler's snowflake to next weekend's Fragment on the geometry of spider webs. All three captured in a memorable moment on the Charles Bridge on the very anniversary of Kepler's birthday. With a fleck of snow on a black coat. A real treat linking radiant spots in time. View in LinkedIn

GENERAL ROUTE. "Given the unicellular ancestry of all multicellular organisms, the evolution of a single-cell genetic bottleneck by co-option of the ancestral phenotype may represent a rapid and general route by which this trait can arise." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

SHORT TIME. "Using experimental evolution, we find that simple algal multicellularity can arise in as little as 219 days in a species that has never had a multicellular ancestor." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

CLUSTER FORMATION. "Multicellular C. reinhardtii display a novel two-stage life cycle in which motile unicellular propagules disperse shortly after transfer to fresh medium, then undergo successive rounds of mitosis to form nonmotile, multicellular clusters bound by an extracellular matrix." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

RESEMBLANCE. "The multicellular life cycle that evolved in our system bears some similarity to one of the most distant relatives of Volvox within the colonial volvocine algae." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

NOT RARE IN LAB SETTINGS. "Despite strong selection, substantial evolutionary responses to selection occurred in just 1 of 10 populations under settling selection within 219 days. Surprisingly, unique major adaptive responses to selection are not uncommon in experimental evolution." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

CITRATE EXAMPLE. "An excellent example is the evolution of citrate catabolism in E. coli (a highly beneficial trait) in 1 out of 12 experimental populations after 31,500 generations of evolution in citrate-containing medium. No citrate utilization occurred in the other 11 populations, even after 8,000 further generations of selection. Even though E. coli was unlikely to evolve the ability to use citrate, this selection experiment clearly shows that the possibility existed." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

QUANDARY. "Although it is possible that a control population could evolve multicellularity in a few months, this would be an unexpected outcome given that hundreds of independent lineages in the genus Chlamydomonas (including C. reinhardtii) have failed to do so over hundreds of millions of years." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn