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STELLATIONS. "There are many interesting solids that may be obtained from the Platonic solids by intersecting them or stellating them. To stellate a solid means to replace each of its faces with a pyramid, that is, with a pointed solid having triangular faces; this transforms the polyhedron into a pointed, three-dimensional star. A beautiful example of a stellated dodecahedron may be found in Escher’s Contrast (Order and Chaos)." https://lnkd.in/d_HZ4K8 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION AS UNPREDICTABLE. "Accidents of history may even determine the survival or extinction of entire lineages, given the capricious and sudden nature of some environmental changes. Stephen Jay Gould maintained that these historical contingencies make evolution largely unpredictable." http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full View in LinkedIn

PLATONIC SOLIDS. "There are only five polyhedra with exactly similar polygonal faces, and they are called the Platonic solids: the tetrahedron, with four triangular faces; the cube, with six square faces; the octahedron, with eight triangular faces; the dodecahedron, with twelve pentagonal faces; and the icosahedron, with twenty triangular faces." These were an artistic foundation for MCE. https://lnkd.in/d_HZ4K8 View in LinkedIn

LOST BETWEEN THE CRACKS. "Natural selection works systematically to adapt populations to their prevailing environments. However, selection requires heritable variation generated by random mutation, and even beneficial mutations may be lost by random drift." https://lnkd.in/dbxjmju View in LinkedIn

SYMMETRY. "These distortions had to obey the three, four, or six-fold symmetry of the underlying pattern in order to preserve the tessellation. The effect can be both startling and beautiful." (Reminiscent of the six-fold symmetry of snowflakes). https://lnkd.in/d_HZ4K8 View in LinkedIn

DEFECTORS. "In the short term, defectors sabotaged the viability of the group; but these findings nevertheless show that transitions to higher orders of complexity are readily achievable, provide insights into the selective conditions, and facilitate experimental analysis of the evolution of individuality." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6953/abs/nature01906.html View in LinkedIn

TRANSITIONAL OBSERVATIONS. "The costs and benefits of cooperation, plus evolutionary susceptibility to defecting genotypes, were analysed to determine conformation to theory. Cooperation was costly to individuals, but beneficial to the group. Defecting genotypes evolved in populations founded by the cooperating type and were fitter in the presence of this type than in its absence." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6953/abs/nature01906.html View in LinkedIn

CHANGE OF ENVIRONMENT. "In media containing other carbon sources, such as maltose or lactose, the variation in performance is much greater. And while the same genes often harbor substitutions, the precise location and details of the mutations almost always differ between the populations." http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full View in LinkedIn

DIVERGENT MUTANTS. "At the same time, there has also been some divergence between populations. Four have evolved defects in DNA repair, causing mutator phenotypes. There is subtle, but significant, between-population variation in mean fitness in the glucose-limited medium in which they evolved." http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full View in LinkedIn

GENE SUBSTITUTIONS. "At least three genes have substitutions in all 12 populations, and several others have substitutions in many populations, even though most loci harbor no substitutions in any of them." http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full View in LinkedIn