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BUGS DEFY DARWINIAN EVOLUTION. "Taken together, the reconstructions of the dynamics of microbial genome evolution show that, in the microbial world, evolution primarily occurs not via the classic Darwinian process adopted by the Modern Synthesis of Evolutionary Biology, i.e. gradual accumulation of numerous, “infinitesimally small” changes (mutations), but rather by much bigger, at least gene-sized, leaps." https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

GIANT GENE GAINS. "The same reconstructions indicate that in all analyzed groups of microbes, the rate of gene gain exceeds the gene duplication rate by at least an order of magnitude. The primary source of gene gain is HGT, which accordingly is the principal route of evolutionary innovation in bacteria and archaea." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

LOSSES OFFSET BY MASSIVE GAINS. "In the long term, excess of gene losses obviously would lead to genome degradation and eventually extinction, and indeed such is the fate of many groups of microbes, in particular parasites and symbionts. In general, however, the gradual gene loss appears to be offset by episodic, massive gene gain that might accompany the emergence of major groups of prokaryotes." https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

LOSSES BEAT MUTATIONS. "Strikingly, the most common process of genome dynamics is actually loss of genes: for most (although not all) groups of microbes, evolutionary reconstructions indicate a twofold to threefold excess of losses over gains per nucleotide substitution." https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

SEVERAL EVENTS. "Although the rates of gene gain, loss, and duplication greatly differ across the bacterial diversity, in the most dynamic groups, several gene gains and losses occur during the time the genome accumulates, on average, one nucleotide substitution per gene." https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

DERIVING GLYCOLYSIS. "The biological system that the researchers used to test ABE is glycolysis, the primary process that produces energy in a living cell. The ability to generate mathematical equations from scratch is what sets ABE apart from Adam, the robot scientist developed by Ross King and his colleagues at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth." https://lnkd.in/eGii4i4 View in LinkedIn

SEA OF DNA. "HGT might be considered a by-product of the presence of substantial amounts of DNA in the environment combined with genetic processes such as transformation and bacteriophage infection that leads to gene transduction." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

MACHINE SCIENCE. "We have confirmed Adam’s conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam’s research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge." (Ross King). https://lnkd.in/dJJ9HmD View in LinkedIn

SCIENCE BY ROBOTS. "The scientists in Britain, led by Ross D. King, a professor at Aberystwyth University, built a robotic scientist they named Adam. Using artificial intelligence, it came up with a hypothesis about genes in baker’s yeast and the enzymes produced by the genes. It then designed and ran experiments to test its hypothesis. Using the results, it revised its hypothesis and ran more experiments before arriving at its conclusions." https://lnkd.in/djSTtXn View in LinkedIn

HISTORICAL FIRST. "While researching yeast-based functional genomics, Adam became the first machine in history to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of its human creators." https://lnkd.in/dB_3QTR View in LinkedIn