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HYBRID COMMUNITIES. “Animals and plants together with all the microbes in and on them are now often called ‘‘holobionts’’, and the ensembles of their genomes ‘‘hologenomes’’.” https://lnkd.in/dk3R9p6y View in LinkedIn

ROOT OF ALL THINGS. “All life on Earth is dependent on biologically mediated electron transfer (i.e., redox) reactions that are far from thermodynamic equilibrium.” https://lnkd.in/dTh3gub5 View in LinkedIn

RADICAL PROPOSITION. “We propose casting metabolic and developmental interaction patterns, rather than the taxa responsible for them, as units of selection.” https://lnkd.in/dk3R9p6y View in LinkedIn

DARK MATTER LENSE. “Even if there are other contributors to the missing mass problem, this mechanism should cause galaxies, or parts of galaxies, to be associated with widely varying ratios of dark matter. If some of these ratios of missing mass to mass are very low it would suggest that the antiuniverse could be the major explanation for the missing mass, along with so far undiscovered ordinary matter.” https://lnkd.in/gDaxUYAS View in LinkedIn

THE REFRAIN. “It’s the song, not the singer: an exploration of holobiosis and evolutionary theory.” (2016). https://lnkd.in/dk3R9p6y View in LinkedIn

POSSIBLE TEST. “Another test of the STH is available in that a galaxy could be large, with very little antimatter gravitationally bound to it, or very small, gravitationally bound to a huge antigalaxy.” (STH = Symmetrical Time Hypothesis). https://lnkd.in/gDaxUYAS View in LinkedIn

MACRO COGS MICRO. “The biogeochemical cycles of H, C, N, O and S are coupled via biologically catalysed electron transfer (redox) reactions.” https://lnkd.in/dvRBqTd9 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF COMPLEX LIFE. “The resulting network of electron transfers led a gas composition of Earth's atmosphere that is far from thermodynamic equilibrium (i.e. it is an emergent property), yet is relatively stable on geological time scales. https://lnkd.in/dvRBqTd9 View in LinkedIn

W. FORD DOOLITTLE. “As of 2007, he has been Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received his BA in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University in 1963 and his PhD from Stanford University in 1967, under Charles Yanofsky. He went on to do postdoctoral fellowships with Sol Spiegelman and Norman R. Pace.” https://lnkd.in/dAPAVZgH View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for this and next weekend features work by Professor W. Ford Doolittle, and his highly original concept that evolution acts at the level of metabolic or massive biogeochemical cycles not at the level of species in microorganisms very active with horizontal gene transfer. Richard Dawkins had previously proposed that the unit of selection was the gene. This is the other end of the spectrum. https://lnkd.in/dk3R9p6y View in LinkedIn