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Hi frds,
which animals on the planet are net-zero on negative entropies?
Is it a necesssity for survival to socialize negative entropies? Does it need some sort of animal group code to overcome animal behavior?
Cherish your feedback.
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Dear Thomas,
yes, the brain's internal energy arises from the quantum statistical washout at a higher scale. My proposal is that negentropic entanglement binds the information (intrinsic) into a structure that is labile or dynamic originating at the molecular to the whole brain and reflecting a consciousness code that is decoded by EM dipoles in brains.
This algorithm can be reproduced in machines.
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Hello dear biologists and biotechnologists,
you should understand my question and my thinking.
What do you think of the excessive involvement of other disciplines (especially mathematics) in publications in the field of biology, is this not a danger for our dear discipline: biology and biotechnology? . How could we explain that there are in certain cases, potentially, more publications in fields of biology, made by mathematicians than by biologists? Do mathematicians no longer manage to publish in mathematical fields that they turn to biology? I'm afraid that before long, real publications by biologists will be very rare. Save our discipline against opportunism.
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Dear Ashok Kamalanathan,
I agree with what you say, however it should remain at the stage of post-experiment modeling tool and not become too much a prediction tool at the expense of traditional biology, that of laboratory experience and on the different fields of application.
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Hallo Sceintists,
Am new in Master of Biology and in my Practicum Lab I was asked to reverse the sequance that give to me in the scripts, why should I do that ? how can one tell if he is using forward or backword sence ?
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Reversing the sequence that was given to you in the script may be necessary for certain analyses or experiments in biology. The sequence refers to the order of nucleotides (A, C, G, and T) in a DNA or RNA molecule.
In molecular biology, the sequence of nucleotides in a DNA or RNA molecule is typically read from the 5' end to the 3' end. This is referred to as the "forward" direction. However, in certain cases, it may be necessary to analyze the complementary strand, which is read in the opposite direction, referred to as the "reverse" direction.
For example, if you are designing PCR primers to amplify a specific region of DNA, you may need to analyze the complementary strand in order to identify potential primer binding sites. In this case, you would need to reverse the sequence in order to work with the complementary strand.
To determine whether you are using the forward or reverse sense, you should look at the orientation of the sequence. If the sequence is presented in the 5' to 3' direction, it is in the forward sense. If the sequence is presented in the 3' to 5' direction, it is in the reverse sense.
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Why and how is this kind of long-term potentiation (LTP) possible?
Is LTP even needed for all sorts of synaptic plasticity and long-term memory formation?
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Longer version:
Long-term potentiation (LTP which is necessary for synaptic plasticity and long-term memory formation) needs repeats and reinforcement of the engrams to be triggered.
However, apparently everybody automatically "absorbs" a lot of information immediately and also permanently, even without needing any extra effort (at least any conscious effort), which seems to be needed for LTP to happen. Everyone seems to have this ability, although it is even stronger in those with better memories.
People simply "learn" many things once; and many of those learned items remain there for a pretty long duration, and in many cases even for the rest of their lives. This seems to happen without any repeats, at least without any apparent or conscious efforts to remember or re-remember those memories. This is the case for a lot of semantic information (especially the information of interest or importance to the person) as well as a large portion of the contents of episodic memory.
Why and how is this kind of LTP possible?
Perhaps attention plays a major role here, e.g., being interesting and important automatically triggers LTP without a further need for repeats.
But such effortless long-term memorization happens also in the case of a lot of semantic information or autobiographical events that are not inherently interesting or significant to the person.
Is LTP even needed for all sorts of synaptic plasticity and long-term memory formation?
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Jerry Waese thanks a lot for your nice software and the image. I will try to play with it and understand what is what.
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I'm in the last year of undergraduation and I want to do research and publish paper on HIF Signalling in Fin or limb regeneration. I don't know how to take a start and I'm unable to find the methods and protocol to use. Can anyone guide me?
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Here are the general steps to conduct research on HIF signaling in fin or limb regeneration in the field of Development and Regeneration Biology:
1) Literature review: Conduct a comprehensive review of the existing literature on HIF signaling and its role in fin or limb regeneration. Identify key research questions, knowledge gaps, and potential areas for further investigation.
2) Study design: Develop a study design that addresses the research questions and hypotheses. This may involve designing experiments to manipulate HIF signaling, such as using genetic or pharmacological approaches.
3) Animal model: Select an appropriate animal model for the study, such as zebrafish or axolotl, which are commonly used for studying fin or limb regeneration.
4) Sample collection: Collect samples from the animal model at various time points after injury or manipulation of HIF signaling. These samples may include fins or limbs, as well as blood or tissue samples for analysis of HIF signaling pathways.
5) Data collection: Collect data on various parameters of regeneration, such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and tissue morphogenesis. This may involve imaging techniques, such as confocal microscopy or X-ray imaging.
6) Data analysis: Analyze the data using appropriate statistical methods and software tools. This may involve comparing the regeneration outcomes between control and experimental groups, as well as identifying correlations between HIF signaling and regeneration outcomes.
7) Interpretation and conclusions: Interpret the results of the study in the context of the existing literature and draw conclusions about the role of HIF signaling in fin or limb regeneration. Identify areas for future research and potential applications of the findings.
8) Communication and dissemination: Communicate the findings of the study to the scientific community through publications in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at conferences. This may also involve communicating the findings to the general public through outreach activities and media engagement.
Note: The above steps are general guidelines and may vary depending on the specific research question and experimental design.
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What is this curious non-updatable mega memory? Does it have any scientific terms?
What are its causes and mechanisms?
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Explanation:
I have had the honor of witnessing very rare people who have some strange forms of mega memory: They effortlessly, automatically, and immediately memorize many difficult things such as phone numbers or their difficult and comprehensive books, etc. And they retain those easily captured memories for a very very long time (a couple of decades at least), without any smallest effort or reinforcement. Not to mention that they record or remember almost everything else (semantic or episodic) quite easily, and also with a lot of details. Furthermore, they are very very accurate in recalling those items. For example, they can serve as pretty reliable living phone books; or for example, they are extremely awesome at medicine, etc.
But when I am talking about "strange", I don't mean their super-human ability to easily capture such vast amounts of information for such long durations and recall them accurately.
Their super-human ability is of course strange. But the even stranger part of their memory is that once it is captured, it cannot be updated or revised easily. For example, if they misunderstand something the first time, it will take perhaps 10 or 20 attempts over days or weeks for their colleagues to remind them of the mistake and ask them to correct their misunderstanding.
It is like that once their memory is formed the very first time, it is set in stone. It is absorbed very efficiently and strongly, and at the same time, not much prone to future updates.
What is this curious non-updatable mega memory? Does it have any scientific terms?
What are its causes and mechanisms?
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Jerry Waese to Larry Carlson:
Larry Carlson memory content can be stronger in so many ways but the memory engram is never any stronger than any other memory engram except in terms of accessibility of it.
i.e. how many different things lead to the reflex activation of the engram.
Greater access is afforded by the extent of interconnection with other engram patterns, while greater clarity is afforded by the extent of difference or uniqueness to other engrams.
I may have 500 "master engrams" that are instrumental in my most salient reflexes as I sit before the laptop screen in my bath. AND I may have 500 similarly instrumental salient reflex perturbing engrams that govern driving while seated in my car.
In the first case, what I am typing may have or may not have any effect on where I go, or what others think. In the second case my own life and others lives depend on what those reflexes do while driving.
The many conditions that lead to me hitting the brakes make that set of braking engrams (maybe 20/500 "master braking engrams" (i.e. administrative controlling engrams that cascade into multiple body articulation and movement engrams)) more accessible than the left turn engrams (maybe 100/500 deal with left turn considerations)
Fortunately I spend more time typing (not always in the bath) than driving.
The relation to intelligence and thermodynamics is a different story, but if we make it the same story it probably will not matter if I get clean (in the bath), communicate well (at RG) or drive into a wall.
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As is well known, Continuous models are richer , more powerful and above all, more intuitive , easy to understand and extendable. So let us say, we are trying to find a biomarker for a disease \ trait. Instead of just looking at absence / presence or frequencies, could one try to establish continuous trackers / markers that positively or negatively correlate with the propensity to contract the disease , such as concentration levels of a chosen set of biomolecules ?? Possibly, this may involve some kind of preliminary pathway analysis. Could one also look at morphological parameters (fractal / scaling dimension of tumors etc ??) ??
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Difference equations can be useful for modeling discrete events in biological systems, such as the discrete stages of a cell cycle or the discrete events of a neural network firing. However, they may not be ideal for modeling continuous processes, such as the dynamics of a chemical reaction or the movement of a fluid through a network of vessels. In these cases, continuous models, such as differential equations or agent-based models, may provide a more accurate representation of the underlying biology.
One limitation of difference equations is that they assume that the changes in a system occur in discrete steps, and do not account for small changes that occur continuously over time. Additionally, they may not be able to capture the effects of small perturbations in the system, which can have a significant impact on the overall behaviour of the system.
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Does the DNA remain stable or degrade at this temperature? Would there be any difference in thermal stability between supercoiled and linear forms of say, 3 kb plasmid.
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I stumbled upon some interesting information: theoretical physicist and writer Alan Lightman asked a group of leading scientists: if you were offered the answer to a scientific puzzle, would you take it? Surprisingly, half of the scientists said no — too much would be lost by not engaging in the act of discovery.
Yes, for science it is important WHAT, but for scientists it is important WHO.
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Hello I am a nuclear master student, so my main focus is physics. I want to pursue a career in research, my main domain will be dosimetry and radioprotection. I want to study the irradiation of cells but this also implies a lot of biology.
How a physicist can approach this interdisciplinary subject for a PhD?
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Hello Claudia,
My name is Fernando and I work as a medical physicist in a Hospital. I made my thesis about radiobiology. The thesis was about statistical concepts like Tumour Control Probability or Normal Tissue Complication Probability...,
I am just an example how you can do your PhD in this subject. You can start visiting a Hospital with a radiotherapy department in Bucharest, there you can find people like me, they can inform you.
Good Luck and go for it.
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Bio-sensor development demands a variety of fields in cooperation. However, this breakthrough would not result in the case of doing research with a single attitude. I am calling researchers from biology or biochemistry, genetics, or related science to come into the discussion. Let me know if somebody has any knowledge in this field.
#Bio-sensors #Biochemistry #Genetics
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More information of how to use receptor for biosensor application!
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Hi All, I am working with A549 cell line and trying to culture spheroids using low attachment 96 well plates. So far I have attempted some different seeding densities from 2000 to 10,000 cells and can either form very large spheroids (700-900um), which are more compact and have a spherical defined shape, or alternatively smaller spheroids (still fairly big though around 500um) are less compact and not completely spherical. However for my experiment where I wish to add drug compounds (2D IC50 approx 1uM) I am not observing significant size/morphology change on the larger spheroids despite at least a 10uM concentration for 1 week. I am thinking possibly I can try to treat smaller spheroids for a more obvious visual change. Does anyone know how i might successfully make small compact spheroids (less than 500um) which are reproducible with this cell line? Thanks in advance for any help someone may be able to provide.
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Of course, time is a significant factor for spheroids' size and viability of cells, due to when you seed the cells to the generation of spheroids after the cells are in the proliferative stage. More time (days) can lead to the big size of spheroids, in addition, the cells located in the core zone are suffered from nutrients, oxygen, and ...
I suggest you set up the best time to achieve reliable results too
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Please spread the word: Folding at Home (https://foldingathome.org/) is an extremely powerful supercomputer composed of thousands of home computers around the world. It tries to simulate protein folding to Fight diseases. We can increase its power even further by simply running its small program on our computers and donating the spare (already unused and wasted) capacity of our computers to their supercomputation.
After all, a great part of our work (which is surfing the web, writing texts and stuff, communicating, etc.) never needs more than a tiny percent of the huge capacity of our modern CPUs and GPUs. So it would be very helpful if we could donate the rest of their capacity [that is currently going to waste] to such "distributed supercomputer" projects and help find cures for diseases.
The program runs at a very low priority in the background and uses some of the capacity of our computers. By default, it is set to use the least amount of EXCESS (already wasted) computational power. It is very easy to use. But if someone is interested in tweaking it, it can be configured too via both simple and advanced modes. For example, the program can be set to run only when the computer is idle (as the default mode) or even while working. It can be configured to work intensively or very mildly (as the default mode). The CPU or GPU can each be disabled or set to work only when the operating system is idle, independent of the other.
Please spread the word; for example, start by sharing this very post with your contacts.
Also give them feedback and suggestions to improve their software. Or directly contribute to their project.
Folding at Home's Forum: https://foldingforum.org/index.php
Folding at Home's GitHub: https://github.com/FoldingAtHome
Additionally, see other distributed supercomputers used for fighting disease:
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Vahid Rakhshan I will definitely spread the word about this amazing initiative. It's great to know that we can contribute to such a noble cause by simply utilizing our excess computer power. Thank you for bringing this opportunity to my attention. Let's join hands in making a difference in the fight against diseases.
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I am on the hunt for the following paper that I cannot seem to access online:
Jensen and Jensen 1969. On the Breeding Biology of African Cuckoos. Ostrich 40: 163-181.
Would anyone that has access to this paper be willing to send me a digital copy?
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Thank you for the offer, Petr! Someone was able to send me a digital version.
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We have a Flask that contains broth, and we want to inoculate it with Bacteria inoculum, Can we simply take a touch by the loop or by micropipette?
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Kseniya Kondrasheva Nikhita Madhav Chambhare Thank you very much, The Goal is Pyocyanin production, we tried 1:100 and yes by micropipette because the loop carry small volume
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In most contexts, the terms alternative medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, holistic medicine, natural medicine, and unconventional medicine are almost synonymous.
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Yes. Naturopathy and phytopharmacology, for example, make great sense, especially as balancing treatments and therapies.
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is there a specific ratio to follow during the addition?
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Add Chloroform to a total of 50% total volume and vortex vigorously for a min or half. Let the sample settle for 10 minutes
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How many grams of K2Cr2O7 to dissolve it in 1 liter Distilled water to obtain 50 ppm of Chromium? to become aqueous solution, Is there a specific equation to apply? Thanks
Ali
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Errami Ahmed answer is correct. 52 is the atomic weight of Cr and 294.18 is the molecular weigh of potassium dichromate. 2 is the stechiometric conversion factor.
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Greeting,
When I tried to remotely accessed the scopus database by login into my institution id, it kept bring me back to the scopus preview. I tried cleaning the cache, reinstall the browser, using other internet and etc. But, none of it is working. As you can see in the image. It kept appeared in scopus preview.
Please help..
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To reach the Scopus document search module, you should use academic IPs. If your institute has been listed in the Scopus database, you have permission to search documents in Scopus. It is not free of charge, and your university should pay its share to Scopus to provide this service for its academic researchers.
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Hello everyone,
I am running a qPCR assay. I chose gradient temperature option for each of my primer to get the best conditions the amplification happens (without heterodimers- NA in negative controls). However, I have seen that my housekeeping gene and one of my target gene have different annealing temperature. Can I run another qPCR set-up just for this gene by choosing gradient temperature option ? For instance; my gene in question in a row with 54C and housekeeping gene in a row with 60C. I think as far as the machine reads the signals at the same time, it won't pose a problem but I just want to make sure.
Many thanks,
Tuba
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It is generally recommended to amplify your targets at a single temperature in a qPCR experiment, as the efficiency of the polymerase reaction can vary with temperature and amplifying at a single temperature allows for more accurate and consistent results. However, if you have identified that the optimal annealing temperature for your target gene and housekeeping gene are different, it is possible to use a gradient temperature protocol in your qPCR experiment to optimize the amplification of each gene.
In this case, you can set up two separate qPCR reactions, one with a gradient temperature that is optimized for your target gene and one with a gradient temperature that is optimized for your housekeeping gene. You can then run these reactions in parallel, either in separate wells of the same qPCR plate or in separate qPCR plates, depending on the capacity of your qPCR machine. As long as the qPCR machine is able to read the signals from both reactions at the same time, it should not pose a problem.
It is important to note that using a gradient temperature protocol can be more time-consuming and may require specialized equipment. It is also worth noting that optimizing the annealing temperature of the primers is generally not necessary for most qPCR experiments, and a single temperature protocol is often sufficient.
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I was offered, like I believe many others, to publish in this relatively new open journal
It that not seem to be a predator journal, but I cannot decide if its a good place to publish
Thanks
Yosi Scolnik
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I am not sure whether Peter Donkor talks about the journal asked here. I presume the questions is about yet another initiative of Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/journals/2/academia_biology Do realize that Academia.edu started a journal before called “Academia Letters” and stopped this initiative already within less than two years. Have a look at https://www.academia.edu/journals/1/academia_letters/submission_faq where they state, “Academia Letters is no longer publishing articles and has stopped accepting submissions.”. See also here on RG: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Academia_Letters_a_Recommendable_option_for_publishing_orphan_papers
The new title “Academia Biology” will start in 2023 to charge an APC which will be a staggering 2000 USD for a basically non-indexed journal published by a ‘publisher’ with no experience and reputation in publishing. Their misleadingly remark about the impact factor suggests that they will have an impact factor in 2025 which is theoretically correct but highly unlikely to happen with this ‘organization’ behind it.
Personally, I would avoid this one.
Best regards.
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Irrational numbers are uncomputable with probability one. In that sense, numerical, they do not belong to nature. Animals cannot calculate it, nor humans, nor machines.
But algebra can deal with irrational numbers. Algebra deals with unknowns and indeterminates, exactly.
This would mean that a simple bee or fish can do algebra? No, this means, given the simple expression of their brains, that a higher entity is able to command them to do algebra. The same for humans and machines. We must be able also to do quantum computing, and beyond, also that way.
Thus, no one (animals, humans, extraterrestrials in the NASA search, and machines) is limited by their expressions, and all obey a higher entity, commanding through a network from the top down -- which entity we call God, and Jesus called Father.
This means that God holds all the dice. That also means that we can learn by mimicking nature. Even a wasp can teach us the medicinal properties of a passion fruit flower to lower aggression. Animals, no surprise, can self-medicate, knowing no biology or chemistry.
There is, then, no “personal” sense of algebra. It just is a combination of arithmetic operations.There is no “algebra in my sense” -- there is only one sense, the one mathematical sense that has made sense physically, for ages. I do not feel free to change it, and did not.
But we can reveal new facets of it. In that, we have already revealed several exact algebraic expressions for irrational numbers. Of course, the task is not even enumerable, but it is worth compiling, for the weary traveler. Any suggestions are welcome.
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We need to be optimistic, because that is the lesson from nature. An animal can self-medicate, obeying natural laws in chemistry that are unknown to animals. A tree grows when pruned, so we can see this pandemic as an opportunity. Let's grow, nature is not a zero-sum game!
Irrational numbers and mathematical real-numbers are uncomputable, with probability 1.
But irrational numbers can be calculated exactly in algebra a and that is how animals are able to calculate-- in a network of thoughts.
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Hello All... I am trying to install Gromacs on windows using conda i have attempted to run "conda install -c bioconda gromacs_py" but it's not working. Any recommendations shall be highly appreciated.
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I am sorry I am not familiar with either gromacs or Cygwin specifically so cannot speak to that. I am also not familiar with conda on Windows.
One option may be to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about) and install Ubuntu or another linux distro. There you would be able to use conda and other tools freely (including sudo).
A second option may be to alter your Windows PATH to include where gromacs is located. If you are unfamiliar, the PATH is where Windows searches for programs and exectuables, so if you place your desired program locations in PATH they should be able to run. This will not place gromacs into a conda environment but may allow you to use how you desire.
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I am a field biologist and especially work with birds and need a good GPS for my field work. If you could recommend one economical one and one intermediately priced one, that would be great. Thanks in advance!
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Thanks Ruben, I'll take that into consideration.
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It is extremely hard to get on board of international science (by that I mean enter an abroad university, and visit international conferences) when you are from a developing country and at the start of a research career. You need an impressive CV to get funding, so I wonder if someone can share information about contests for undergraduates or/and Master students of Life Science.
From my side, there is International Student Tournament (https://www.facebook.com/intscitour/), iGEM (https://igem.org/) ... and that`s basically it.
Thank you
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ICHAMS – a scientific meeting founded and completely run by our students in the Royal College of Surgeons University. Do I sound proud of them? By golly, I am!
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Hi, I am a 1st-semester biology student. i would like to know the opinion of you, that your field of study is biology and how do you think ethics relates to the decisions you make day-to-day.
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Vadim S. Gorshkov
This depends also a lot on our degree of free choice, but I do principally agree to your statement ! As I was never interested in greater intellectual puzzles, my choice was limited by the personal preference for practical problem-solving methods (’human action’) and the study of scientific methodology applications ( ‚real range of our methods‘ ).
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Economics is a living thing—and to live implies both imperfection and change. There is joint action, but no joint thinking. There is only tradition which preserves thoughts and communicates them to others as a stimulus to their thinking. Human action is purposeful behavior. Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise On Economics
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best regard
Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm Johana, a biology student at the Francisco Jose de Caldas-Colombia district university, I have a job for which I need to contact a researcher and I found your articles very interesting. For this reason, I was motivated to write to you to request A help in front of work, our subject is bioethics and I would like to ask you some questions that you can answer briefly.
How does ethics influence biology?
What happens in situations where ethics is worth more than
knowledge?
Thank you for your attention and if possible please answer the questions, thank you very much
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Best regards, sorry for the inconvenience, as I asked in my previous publication, this time I need another answer from another biologist or biology in order to complete my investigation and have different points of view. Thanks for your attention
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Biosocial studies encompass a set of approaches constituted by the space of knowledge generated by the interaction between biology and sociology. This space takes us back to the beginnings of social studies where biology and social sciences walked side by side. At present, these studies are being revitalised. For this reason, we want to contribute at Societies to strengthening this discipline and its research. When we conceive of biosocial research, we automatically think of medicine. However, the relationship between genetics and society, epigenetics, social evolution, the environment and the social, etc. can also be present in this field of study. In short, biosocial study is a diverse and plural set of approaches of great interest and relevance for today's world. In this Topic, we want to bring together the best international biosocial research. For this reason, we hope to feature the work of social scientists interested and concerned with the environment, health, diseases, biology, disability, old age, climate and energies in their relation to society. All these approaches also need a broad methodological perspective, so the issue is open to theoretical and empirical (quantitative and qualitative) work. We believe that studies of a conceptual nature with future hypotheses would also be of great interest. This issue aims to advance biosocial studies from a broad and diversified approach. Biosocial study helps us to better understand the surrounding reality. This is apparnt is we consider, for a moment, the numerous studies on SARS-CoV-2, or the possibilities that the social sciences offer to biomedicine or the science of care. On the other hand, we would like this issue to help biologists understand that the social sciences can help and complement their research. All in all, this is an exciting and thought-provoking Topic.
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Hello Juan; All of conservation science is biosocial. Our interactions with the natural world have proven to be pretty damaging and fixing the problems is often a social solution. Social scientists and conservation advocates have a critical, cooperative role to play is helping get us out of our present dilemmas. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
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Which software is best for making high-quality graphs? Origin or Excel? Thank you
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origin
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Suppose we conveniently extended the standard concept of cellular automaton to include
graphs and state-spaces Q of any cardinality and that the transition function F belonged to a certain adequate notion of "(hyper)computable function". We call this a hyper-cellular automaton HCA.
Consider the postulate: the universe can be described by a HCA with transition function F.
We cannot escape the problem of the initial condition Q_0. In the Wolfram Classification random initial conditions are considered. Hence the expediency for some topology or measure on Q.
Q will include for instance the usual sheaves (principle bundles and connections) considered in the standard model. It will also include other aspects to account for quantum gravity, consciousness, emergent biological complexity, etc.
It is an empirical fact that this HCA must be WC4 "complex patterns of localised structures" in the Wolfram Classification.
A major problem is the goal of reverse engineering F is that we do not have evolutions for other initial conditions at our disposal neither for the universe nor for subsystems of the universe. For physics at least a lot of locality and invariance hypotheses come in to play to justify the universality of experimental conclusions. The chemistry we observe on earth must also be that of the most distant star.
For biology the situation is drastically different. My question is: how can biology go beyond being a merely descriptive science as contrasted with fundamental physics ?
Biology seems to be mainly a "reverse engineering" affair. But it is also important
to have detailed, mathematically precise models - perhaps using HCAs - that can be used to test hypotheses and perform simulations.
Molecular biology suggests a new paradigm for software-hardware, a fluid mobile computer with essentially interconnected parts. A key characteristic is that information operations are tied to material and energetic constraints.
Also we must focus on ecosystems (the analogue of the cell ? ) rather than individual species. What about the idea of a "natural internet" (via horizontal gene transfer, etc.) ?
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Dear @Clarence-Protin,
This a great question. A short answer is: "Yes. Everything computable can be simulated in the GoL because it was already proven to be Turing machine equivalent!", see the paper citation in the paper [1].
A partial answer to your question can be found in the simulation of AND logic gate, see my publications list. For examples of the development of the whole computer processor in GoL, see again the links in the paper [1].
The core message of this paper is to define the initial steps on the path of emergent, self-assembling, error-resilient computers. The paper demonstrated a way to search for error-proof computation means. The end result should be computers, which after destroying their substantial part will have the capability to reconfigure themselves to the original functions, possibly just a bit slower in delivering of outputs.
Back to your question from the previous comment, large-scale simulations can reveal some very interesting types of behaviors. I do see how to tackle this problem on a large and sufficiently powerful computer, cooperation on this project is open.
[1] Jiri Kroc: "Robust massive parallel information processing environments in biology and medicine: case study", Problems of Information Society 13:2 (2022) 12-22.
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Can someone can please explain how Triton causes permeabilisation of the cell membrane without causing cell contents to leak out?
Is it because my cells are fixed with pfa and that plays a role in preventing leakage of contents?
Also, how exactly does Triton work anyway, with regards to its structure affecting membrane? It is a detergent but what im understanding is it partially permeabilises membrane (not fully) otherwise whole cell would fall apart
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Hello Rh Rj
Aldehyde-based fixatives such as formaldehyde (4% formaldehyde) react with and crosslink cellular proteins, stabilizing and hardening the sample. Aldehydes cross the plasma membrane and fix soluble proteins. Some targets can lose their antigenicity with aldehyde crosslinking.
To allow antibody access, detergents like Saponin and Triton X-100 remove different molecules from cellular membranes and create variable pore sizes.
Each detergent has different chemical properties that will impact the level of permeabilization and membrane integrity. For example, saponin interacts with cholesterol in cell membranes and leaves many membrane-associated proteins in place. In contrast, Triton X-100 and Tween-20 are examples of non-ionic detergents that interact with lipids and proteins in membranes and permeabilize non-selectively. This non-selectivity is helpful when trying to pass tough-to-permeabilize membranes. However, detergents can lyse cells or cause you to lose soluble proteins from the sample, if left on for too long or used at too high a concentration.
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If we take a description of the solar system in terms of Newton's equations then the solutions are time-reversible.
But many phenomena in nature are observed to be non-reversible, "dissipative", hence not having time-reversible solutions. For instance, a glass falling off the table and breaking.
The big question is: can the second law of thermodynamics be deduced from the fundamental differential equations of physics ?
Or more generally are there differential equations whose solutions are mostly entropy-increasing ?
On the other hand can we find (a system of) differential equations whose solutions are generally entropy-decreasing ? Or in which entropy-decreasing phenomena occur in relatively frequent bursts ? Differential equations which would have solutions in which the pieces spontaneously assemble into the glass on the table ?
Contemporary physics is essentially incomplete (cf. the need for dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions, etc.). Perhaps in the complete picture entropy is actually strictly conserved. The entropy-increasing forces/fields are counterbalanced by (at present unknown) entropy-decreasing ones, in which entropy-decreasing phenomena occur in relatively frequent bursts.
Then it is this entropy-decreasing aspect of nature that is the main cause of life, the cause of the relatively frequent bursts of increased self-organisation and complexity (which would then be further modulated (or "selected") by the constraints of the environment and the ecosystem).
Perhaps the "collapse of the wave-function" could be approached thermodynamically as well ?
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Thank you for your feedback on my discussion topic. I agree, such phenomena are possible, just statistically extremely rare.
Also I should point out that I was assuming strict determinism only for the sake mathematical simplicity.
The present format does not allow me to be more precise about the ideas presented above. Later on I plan to write a more concrete and rigorous presentation of these ideas terms of cellular automata and dynamical systems.
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Hello Scholars,
I am an undergraduate at the University of Cross River State, Nigeria currently pursuing a microbiology program. For familiarity and enhanced understanding of the course, I wish to seek recommendations on the virtual/simulation laboratory software that would be very helpful to me and my colleagues. With my interest in research too, I will be pleased if a research simulator is recommended to help widen my understanding of Microbiological research.
Your recommendations would go a long way to significantly contribute to my academic career as well as my colleagues.
Thank you
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Thermofisher Scientific has a virtual lab training option on cell culture. You can check here: https://www.thermofisher.com/bd/en/home/global/forms/cell-culture-basics.html
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In our diagnostic lab, we extract pure viral RNA (Qiagen viral RNA extraction kit).
Therefore, no 28S and 18S rRNA can be traced in agarose gel for total RNA integrity assesment. However, very small bands appear on gel (as seen in picture), are those 5S rRNA or other small RNA moleculea? If so, may they be correlated to total RNA integrity?
Is there any other way to asses the pure viral RNA integrity (besides Bioanalyzer)?
Thanks
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You can use primers that amplify products of different lengths. In low-integrity samples you then observe an increased shift between Ct values of shorter and of longer products. I used this to get a hold of RNA integrity of laser-microdissected samples where the amount of RNA was not sufficient to see peaks in electropherograms ("Bioanalyzer") and not to mention bands in agarose gels. As I used oligo-dT priming in the RT, I amplified equally sized products that were located at different distances from the poly-A tail. If you use randompriming, it should work also with the amplification of products of different lengths.
You will need a standard of known good quality to compare against. If nothing else works, you can make a synthetic standard by mixing purified PCR products (in equimolar ratios). But take care of cross-contaminations (prepare/purify the standard in a different lab, ideally in a differn building!).
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I found a species of Coniopterygidae preying on eggs and nymphs of Aleurothrixus floccosus in a lemon tree. I have followed its biology and have pictures of eggs, larvae, pupae and adults. With my thanks in advance, any help is welcome.
Luis
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Hola Dr. Luis.
Logró identificar la especie de Coniopterygidae?
podría compartir información y fotos de las larvas, pupas y adulto.
Muchas gracias de antemano, saludos desde Guatemala
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Which potential insect extinctions cause irreversible tipping points?
Cherish your insights.
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The most significant extinction for ecosystems is insect pollinators, as well as groups of coprophages and necrophages. But any other species of insect will have an impact on the ecosystem when it disappears. For many species, participation in ecosystem trophism has not yet been clarified.
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I have noticed while reading different publications that some have used collagen to coat slide/chamber surface in fluid-flow cell experiments, while others used fibronectin. Does coating rely on the type of cells that I am going to use? Example: collagen coating for bone cells, fibronectin coating for endothelial cells?
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This is going to be cell type dependent mostly, but one consideration is that a fibronectin, being extremely sticky, will attach to collagen type I (i.e. 10% serum fibronectin is about 30 ug/ml). So unless you are blocking the surface with heat-denatured 1% BSA it likely will still be a fibronectin coating. Usually 1-10 ug/ml fibronectin is ample, but 100 ug/ml of collagen type I is needed. Also collagen solutions are pH sensitive and will self polymerize. If using a collagen coating add cold (4C) PBS and coat for 4 hours at 4C to stop the polymerization from occurring. Fibronectin is best coated at 37C for 1 hour diluted in PBS (it can precipitate at 4C).
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Hi everyone, I was wondering about the possibilities of performing numerical taxonomy with SPSS software. I would be very thankful to recieve advice!! For now I have been reading about hierarchical clustering, principal component and discriminant function analysis... Help!!
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you can do it by xlstst to make a hierarchical clustering
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I am writing a review article in biotechnology and as you know graphic images are so important in these papers. I would appreciate it if you suggest the best options. Thank you
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for creating graphic images I recommend you biorender.com you have on this website all the templates also they are for free, you can register and start creating your first graphic abstract and images. in many articles and reviews, all the graphics are made via this website.
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It requires about 5.3 kcal/mol (or 8 kBT) of energy to break one phoshodiester bond of DNA. How do these enzymes cut the DNA only by using thermal energy and not ATP? I am only considering the ATP-independent restriction enzymes (Type II). How do these enzymes manage to generate the necessary energy? I couldn't find the exact mechanism with energetics of restriction enzymes cleaving DNA. Please provide me any relevant references.
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No, the standard free energy of hydrolysis of the phosphodiester bond in DNA is -5.3 kcal/mol. It requires energy to forge a phosphodiester bond, while to break one requires only enough energy to overcome the activation energy barrier, which is lowered by enzymatic- , acid- or base catalysis. Under physiological conditions, hydrolysis is further facilitated by the high water concentration.
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Hi
The link given below is the journal list for no APC.
(Link built by Jeysson Sánchez-Suárez)
Can anyone include more Scopus journals in Genomics, Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Microbiology, and Biology as a whole with no APC?
Thanks in advance.
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Adjust your question by adding the proper link https://www.researchgate.net/post/Scientific_Journals_with_Open_Access_and_no_APC_free_charges_for_authors and give the proper credits to Jeysson Sánchez-Suárez who built up the list.
Best regards.
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Human activities have greatly changed the natural environment since the Industrial Revolution. Have migratory birds changed their migration routes? Why can migratory birds do this?
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Hello everyone,
I'm an undergrad biology student from Denmark, and i work on a project with D. melanogaster. We're having a problem we can't figure out, and therefore i've created this account, hoping some of you have had the same experience with the CAFE and knows the reason.
We're feeding D. melanogaster with the Capillary Feeder Assay (CAFE) with 5 μL capillary tubes. Our problem is that after we've been feeding the flies for 24 hours or so, an air pocket starts to form in the bottom of the capillary tubes (green arrow, see attached picture), therefore making the liquid food inaccessible to the flies. The liquid food should "fall down" after the flies drinks from the capillary tubes, but instead this air pocket forms. This happens to at least 9/10 capillary tubes. The red ring (see attached picture) is how the capillary tubes should look like with liquid food and no air pocket in the bottom.
We're feeding them with 5 % sucrose and tap water in both 20 and 23 degrees Celsius.
Capillary tubes are 23 mm long and made of glass. Unknown inner or outer diameter. The capillary tubes we use: https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/DK/en/product/sigma/p1799
I hope the problem is clear and that i've provided all the necessary information
Christian
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Christian; Well, I'm baffled. Adding fluid at the top will probably form a bubble, but try it and see what happens. Jim Des Lauriers
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Hi, everyone i hope you are doing well.
I need some insight, as i am going to start my PhD in 2023.
I am little lost about the research as i have been not in touch with the latest growing reseach.
I did my MS research on "Endophytic Pseudomonas mediated activity against phytopathogenic fungi".
I was thinking about doing the PhD research on the similar topic but as i read literature, there have been alot of research on this topic already.
I want to ask,
1. Can i change my research field in Phd, even i have experience in different field in MS.
2. What biology field is more in scope now a days?
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Thank you for your kind response.
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What is the level of biodiversity loss of the planet's natural ecosystems as a result of the progressive process of climate change?
During the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic in 2020, there was a recession of the economy, the level of consumption, the scale of international transport of products, international tourism, car use, fuel and energy consumption, etc. declined.
There was then an opportunity to accelerate the processes of pro-environmental transformation of the economy, including the pro-environmental transformation of the transport sector, energy, construction, etc.
Unfortunately, this opportunity was not seized. As a consequence of these omissions, the subsequent economic and energy crises will be deeper than if the necessary transformation of the energy sector, which is being implemented through the development of renewable and emission-free energy sources, had been carried out in the past.
As a result, the global warming process continues to accelerate and progress faster than even the earlier IPCC reports published a few years ago and earlier.
One of the negative consequences of the continuing process of global warming is the loss of biodiversity of natural ecosystems.
I would therefore like to ask the following question:
Is there research on the extent of the loss of biodiversity of natural ecosystems on a global scale as a result of the progressive process of global warming?
Is there data on the state of biodiversity loss in natural ecosystems as a result of the progressive process of global warming, as a result of civilisation's emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases since the beginning of the first industrial revolution?
What is the scale of the loss of biodiversity of natural ecosystems, fauna and flora as a result of the progressive process of global warming?
What is the past and projected scale of loss of biodiversity of the biosphere as a result of the progressive process of global warming?
What is the level of biodiversity loss of the planet's natural ecosystems as a result of the progressive process of climate change?
What do you think?
What is your opinion on the subject?
What do you think about this issue?
Please reply,
I invite you all to discuss,
Thank you very much,
Best regards,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
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In Australia, we have lost around 50-60% of the population of most larger marsupials due to habitat clearing and clearfell forestry. The 2019 drought and mega-bushfires (and some other intensive fires in the previous decade or so) which in part were fuelled by climate change have further reduced populations of many marsupials by around half again. Some 20-25% of some species remain. In the case of the koala I have seen estimates of only 140,000 remaining in the wild. These are all preliminary and longer term data may show some bounce-back or some further declines (as recently record flooding also fueled in part by climate change has also impacted many of the areas impacted by the major drought and unprecedented bushfires.
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The phrase in the Title line imitates Karl Popper’s All Life is Problem Solving.
Since thermodynamics plays a role in life processes, it was surprising that searching “All life is thermodynamics” on Google on August 16, 2022 gave no results.
Don’t organisms seek to optimize and preserve the entropy of their internal energy distribution? And to optimize their use of energy and outcomes based on energy inputs? Aren’t survival and procreation ways of preserving previous products of energy use?
Is there justification for the statement, All life is thermodynamics? Or is the statement too simple to convey any insight?
Schrodinger in What is Life referred to thermodynamics, statistical mechanics; chapter 6 is Order, Disorder and Entropy. And more recently there is: J. Chem. Phys. 139, 121923 (2013); doi: 10.1063/1.4818538 Statistical physics of self-replication by Jeremy England.
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Possibly the phrase is part of the dogma of our knowledge of physics (for now)... Perhaps the correct phrase would be "life as we know it..."
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I'm searching for a good collaborator or a research group that might want to tackle an interesting problem involving the relationship between quantum dots generating nanoparticle clusters and their DNA/proteins corral. This relationship is encapsulated by geometric proximity, that is I'm looking for someone who might know how quantum mechanics impacts something like these nanoparticles, such as how close a nanoparticle is to another nanoparticle or a protein and whether sized clusters form. Ping me if you're in the bio sciences, computational biology, chemistry, biology or physical sciences and think you might be able to shed some light on the above.
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Navjot Singh This might surprise you but I recommend you analyse the problem without using quantum theory. If you take a look at the preprint linked below you will see a different approach to the analysis of molecular bonds:
This is based on the Spacetime Wave theory and shows how a stable bond is formed when the electrostatic and electromagnetic forces are in balance.
Richard
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Currently, in Japan, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology are taught independently in science education context. So I would like to know, has any country developed a curriculum that emphasizes the relationship or overlaps between these four fields? I know that similar movement is occurring under the name of "STEM integration." But how about the case of physics, chemistry, biology, and geology? (Or I should say "PCBG integration") I would appreciate it if you could let me know anything.
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At the secondary level, the courses are integrated with each other. Mathematics exercises are related to chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, environment, and space sciences. We adopt the methodology of lesson research in education.
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Olen R.Brown & David A.Hullender published a paper in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology journal in August 2022 with the name ( Neo-Darwinism must Mutate to survive ) : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079610722000347
the writers doubt macroevolution or the ability of known mechanisms of evolution to explain macroevolution as they say :
The central focus of this perspective is to provide evidence to document that selection based on survival of the fittest is insufficient for other than microevolution. Realistic probability calculations based on probabilities associated with microevolution are presented. However, macroevolution (required for all speciation events and the complexifications appearing in the Cambrian explosion) are shown to be probabilistically highly implausible (on the order of 10−50) when based on selection by survival of the fittest. We conclude that macroevolution via survival of the fittest is not salvageable by arguments for random genetic drift and other proposed mechanisms.
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Hello Boudjema; Your last reply to Mr. Dsugutov is perfect! The Grants' research is the clearest demonstration of the phenomenon available to a nonspecialist audience. Well done! Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
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Forests are the biodiversity wealth of natural ecosystems and a key factor in the wealth of the planet's biosphere. However, this natural wealth is rapidly being eroded by human civilisational activities. The scale of forest fires has been increasing in recent years. The increasing scale of forest fires is a result of the ongoing process of global warming. In some regions of the world, forests are also being burned in order to acquire more land for the cultivation of agricultural crops, which is usually carried out under predatory and unsustainable farming practices. It is well known that forests are one of the key factors in reducing the rate of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, an important factor in slowing down the greenhouse effect and consequently also in slowing down global warming. It is therefore essential to increase the scale of forest fire protection.
The following questions are therefore becoming increasingly topical:
How to protect forests from fires?
What is your opinion on this subject?
What do you think about this topic?
Please reply,
I invite you all to discuss,
Thank you very much,
Regards,
Dariusz
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Dear Colleagues and Friends from the Research Gate portal,
Thanks for the answers given. From the answers above, it is clear that there are various ways and methods to protect forests from fires. Some of them are already in use but need to be scaled up, such as educating the public about the importance of the role of forests for the survival of most of the planet's biodiversity, the role of forests in limiting the scale and effects of the progressive process of global warming and therefore also in terms of human survival on the planet over the next at least several decades. On the other hand, some of these methods need to be further improved and also scaled up. These include, for example, creating new species of trees and shrubs that will be more resistant to abiotic (e.g. climate warming) and biotic (viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic diseases) environmental factors. In addition to this, improving forest planning and management techniques by replacing disease- and fire-prone forest monocultures with multi-species, biodiverse forests, rich in natural forest ecosystems. Forest harvesting techniques are also among the methods that need to be further improved and developed. Well, instead of full felling, full deforestation in a specific area of the forest, which leads to rapid sterilisation and reduction of soil moisture, it is necessary (if at all) to cut only some, selected, individual trees in areas where the forest was planted without devastating the surrounding biosphere, without destroying the rest of the biodiverse natural forest ecosystem. It is also necessary to improve forest fire extinguishing techniques, creation of reservoirs for extinguishing water from rainfall, creation of systems limiting the rapid spread of a forest fire (clearing belts devoid of dry undergrowth, etc.), limiting the scale of draining of areas adjacent to forests, improving the system for detecting low levels of moisture of litter and undergrowth, improving systems for noticing micro-fires in order to increase the efficiency of action and shorten the time of fire development and its extinguishing by fire brigades. To this end, the new information technologies of ICT, the Internet and Industry 4.0 and satellite analytics should be used, as well as rapid transmission of information and informing specific public services and citizens as quickly as possible. In view of the ever-increasing scale of forest fires, which are increasingly caused by the progressive process of global warming and by their deliberate burning by humans, the problem is still very serious. In my country from January to July 2022, the number of forest fires increased compared to previous years and was already the same as in the whole of 2021. By 25.7.2022, there were already more forest fires in Poland than in the whole of last year 2021. In addition, an unusually high number of hot days have already been recorded. The scale of forest fires occurring in different regions of the world has once again intensified in recent months. In recent months, there have been forest fires in many countries in Europe, North America and on other continents. In some countries, record-breaking forest fires are still developing. Firefighters from various countries are involved in extinguishing them as part of international assistance. The problem is serious. The level of seriousness of this problem will increase in the years to come if mankind does not stop the increasingly rapid process of global warming. In addition, in the context of the above problem, it is particularly important to significantly increase the scale of afforestation in wasteland and post-industrial areas, areas degraded by civilisation. It is urgently necessary to bring about the prevalence of afforestation processes over deforestation on a global scale and to stop the deforestation of natural, biodiverse forest ecosystems. Why should we wait until the end of this decade to do so, as agreed at the UN-ET Climate Conference COP26. After all, what we do now in terms of a pro-environmental transformation of the economy on an individual, one-year scale translates into a potential slowdown in the progressive process of global warming on a multi-year scale. In some countries, the issue of the need to urgently and swiftly carry out a pro-environmental transformation of the economy is still downplayed and ignored in the political and business spheres. This is also the case in the country in which I operate. The issue of the key determinants of carrying out a pro-environmental transformation of the classic growth, brown, linear economy of excess to a sustainable, green, zero-carbon zero-growth and closed loop economy, in which the issue of the development of aforestation programmes and the protection of the planet's biosphere and climate is one of the essential elements, is described in my articles posted on my profile of this RG portal. Links to these articles can be found on the homepage of my RG profile. I invite you to collaborate, to set up joint international research projects in this important issue for the future of humanity, the biosphere and the planetary climate. I also invite you to continue discussions on the important issue of improving techniques, instruments and systems for forest fire protection.
Thank you very much,
Best regards,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
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I do recognise that there’s a well-known problem (hard though it is) of establishing how consciousness emerges or can be accounted for in physical processes. But I can’t at all agree that there’s a naturalistic, absolute hard problem of consciousness, because it’s an incoherent concept.
Nobody (at least nobody with a clue) supposes that neurophysiology can explain a qualitative difference in the way you and I experience the content of my music mix playing quietly in the background, or see the light reflect off a rainbow, or any of the other ways in which our qualitative experience discriminates from that of other live organisms. To suppose that just because you don’t know the mechanisms of the experience in your own head you will deny them the existence of them in somebody else’s is bizarre and reductionist.
Construct an imaginary metaphor of a magical, wizardry, thing-maker consciousness and you haven’t explained the qualitative data there either. It’s still the question of how consciousness comes into the work whether any magical things happen or whether there’s anybody there at all. To suppose a separate, inexplicable, mysterious, magic ingredient does neither any explanatory good, solve the hard problem, nor explain the evidence. All such arguments for a separate consciousness occurrent substance do, again, be it a magic nonsense or magic substance involved, reduce the hard problem of explaining thisness-of-consciousness (to pick a crazy approach) to the very same hard problem of explaining how consciousness arises in the first place.
If you identify the hard problem entirely with the mechanism through which the feeling-of-redness arises, or "the feeling of the future in an invariant past", or anything else you allude to, then you plainly have just traded in one way of asking a very simple question of the wrong approach. The question is, how do the millions of biological chunks and sub-systems interact with one another and integrate information over time and space? The sense of sight, sound, touch and soil all raise a “hard problem” of projection-understanding and categories-beyond-the-reliable-input-enumeration because by a vast over-engineering of the metaphor arms race (as even you must agree) the response-device signals of a single kind of appropriate examination will allow all in-the-know people to interpret an external reality quite differently. But the “hard problem” isn’t WHY is it that we can punch those signals at all, or make sense of the signals that come out the other end. That’s just the default condition of our very real neurological symposium. Whereas the “humanness” of that experience is also an entirely benignly apparent phenomenon, just as water’s polar nature is an entirely benignly apparentity.
For me the cardinal point is to reckon with how we perceive our own subjective value via multi-sensory data input both direct and indirect in both our two and three dimensional waking experience. And because at the very least you have to be wrong or qualified immensely if you think it’s not merely the interaction between general anatomy, organisation, information processing and output of your brain and all subjective processes such that personal conclusions then magically appear as relevant claims about reality.
P.S. I don't think evolution throws up any magical consciousness, either on its petri-dish experiments, or those novelty subjectiveness media that it comes up with sometimes. So I'd like to challenge that viewpoint, particularly in terms of our understanding of the nuances.
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Navjot Singh I define consciousness as the subjective experience that we each have arising from the operation of the brain.
In the paper titled the conscious brain, I have identified the importance of understanding how we control our focus of attention.
The brain is a particular combination of biology chemistry and physics and it is a lack of understanding of fundamental physics that has held us back.
Neuroscience has revealed the brain activity in the form of the network of neurons but we have to understand the effect of the electromagnetic wave activity generated by the brain on the operation of the brain as a whole.
Richard
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Globally, deforestation processes continue to outpace aforestation processes.It is well known that forests are one of the key influences on the climate, on the stability and sustainability of the climate, the maintenance of a humid microclimate, local water management, the state of biodiversity in regions.
Forests are also one of the key factors in reducing the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. At the UN climate summit COP26, it was agreed that by the end of this decade, i.e. by the end of 2030, national and global forest deforestation processes should be completed and forest afforestation processes should be accelerated. The restoration of forest ecosystems should be carried out in accordance with the principles of ecology of specific environmental formations of forest ecosystems consisting of replacing monocultures of tree crops with biodiverse restored, tree-rich forest ecosystem formations adequate to the specific local environment, geological and climatic setting.
But why do we have to wait so many more years for this? Why have such decisions not been taken earlier?
Why do the processes of afforestation not already prevail over deforestation?
Why are forests still being cut down when we know how important they are for slowing down the progressive process of global warming?
What needs to be done so that aforestation processes already prevail over deforestation?
How can afforestation processes be implemented quickly and effectively?
How can afforestation processes in civilisationally degraded areas be carried out quickly and efficiently?
How can afforestation be carried out with a high level of biodiversity in restored natural forest ecosystems?
What do you think about it?
What is your opinion on this topic?
Please reply,
I invite everyone to the discussion,
Thank you very much,
Kind regards,
Dariusz
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Choose to plant trees as part of your life.
I think we have choices about what we focus on as a culture. While none of us has the power to decide that, we can decide for ourselves and those around us what activities we engage in. We decide to promote reading and learning or not. We decide to promote diversity and freedom, or the censorship and oppression of those around us. We create our culture via many small decisions.
Likewise, we can decide to make planting trees part of out culture or not. And not just one day a year when we plant a tree,... that means not much.
How can afforestation be increased? - Quora
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A patient with desminopathy survived Covid-19 six months ago without pneumonia, but with a temporary loss of smell and taste. After Covid-19, we note an accelerated progression of desminopathy, penetration accelerates, new muscles are quickly involved in the pathological process, muscle mass decreases, and heart function worsens. Perhaps the infection or its consequences are somehow connected with the mechanism of progression of desminopathy?
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To save life in desminopathy, can the body purposefully reduce muscle mass, for example, due to decreased heart function or for another reason?
It is known that when hypothermia, the body sacrifices limbs for survival. Is it possible with desminopathy a similar phenomenon?
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Dear Mozhgan Norouzi, thank you very much for your reply!
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A patient with desminopathy (mutation Thr341Pro DES in a heterozygous state) with the progression of the disease has a decrease in taste and smell, immunosuppression, and an increase in IgA in the blood.
Oddly enough, but all this is characteristic of infections, including viral ones. For example, it is known that if the hepatitis C virus is not treated, then death will occur in 20 years.
In the identified case of late onset desminopathy, muscle weakness manifests itself at the age of 30, and death occurs 20 years after the onset of the disease.
Could the desmin mutation in myofibrillar myopathy be caused by an infection?
Perhaps the infection contributes to the progression of desminopathy?
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A patient with desminopathy survived Covid-19 six months ago without pneumonia, but with a temporary loss of smell and taste. After Covid-19, we note an accelerated progression of desminopathy, penetration accelerates, new muscles are quickly involved in the pathological process, muscle mass decreases, and heart function worsens. Perhaps the infection or its consequences are somehow connected with the mechanism of progression of desminopathy?
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Hello!
I was wondering if anyone could point me to any references that show that with increasing oligo length, there is a significant reduction in ssDNA generation efficiency. Im specifically curious at what point heating to separate dsDNA becomes ineffective and some sort of legitimate physical experiment to quantify this reduction with increasing DNA length.
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found an assay here, thank you all!
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Hi
Some authors use either correlation matrices or VIF to identify collinearity between variables, while others apply both to improve model performance and interpretability. Therefore, I would be happy to get statistical explanations from anyone about the tools used separately and simultaneously or I want to know if other robust mechanisms to check collinearity are extant.
Thank you in advance!
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Both can be used, but I will suggest you to isolate the variables through PCI
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I just received this email from Peer Review Department from "Insights in Biology and Medicine" Journal.
I think that this journal is not indexed.
Here is the email:
Dear Dr. Hany Mansour,
In the view of your eminence in the field, we kindly request you to review a manuscript from the Insights in Biology and Medicine.
This is to bring to your kind notice that we have received a manuscript entitled "Dead Sea Salt Solution: composition, lack of cytotoxicity and in vitro efficacy against oral leukotoxins, endotoxins, and glucansucrase"
We believe that your expertise and experience in the subject matter will certainly help in enhancing the quality of the manuscript.
We request you to accept this manuscript for review purpose and send the comments in the stipulated date.
Please find the attachments of the manuscript and Evaluation form.
Your support will be highly appreciated in publishing the research and development works in Open Access.
Best compliments,
Lisa
Peer-Review Department
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Dear Hany Samy ,
In addition to what Anton Vrdoljak already indicated I can tell that the publisher behind the journal “Insights in Biology and Medicine” is “Heighten Science Publications” (https://www.hspioa.org ). A publisher mentioned in the Beall’s list of predatory publishers (https://beallslist.net ). This is a red flag but there are more:
-On their website https://www.biologymedjournal.com they prominently mention “Pubmed NLM Abbr: Insights Biol Med” misleadingly suggesting PubMed indexing
-They are not mentioned positively here:
So, better ignore.
Best regards.
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Good day,
i have a general question about tissue culture.
I have found the following recipe for Epipremnum Aureum "Marble Queen":
Leaf Explant: MS Medium + 4.54 µM TDZ + 1.07 µM NAA (Thidiazuron in Micropropagation of Aroid Plants by Chen and Wei (2018), p. 105, DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-8004-3_4)
Specifically, I have the following questions.
1) Do i only need to autoclave the agar with distilled water (I use a pressure cooker for this) and when the agar has cooled down a bit just add the MS, TDZ and NAA and mix it or do i need to autoclave the MS as well?
2) Will the TDZ dissolve in the agar water at all and how hot can the agar water be to add the MS, TDZ and NAA?
3) Is it even necessary to autoclave the water incl. agar (in the pressure cooker) if I clean all the jars with NaClO (sodium hypochlorite)?
Thank you in advance!
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In general, all things associated with tissue culture need to be properly sterilized. For me, I autoclave the complete media (MS, hormones(I use 2.4-D, NAA, BAP, Kinetin), and agar) along with the culture vessel (petri dish or test tube). But it is better to filter sterilize (.2 micron) the hormones and vitamins (of the media) and add them to MS media (agar mixed) when the temperature drops to about 50 degrees celcius.
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I'm using Sporosarcina pasteurii to remove heavy metals from wastewater by producing metal carbonates. The issue I encounter is that high metal concentrations (i.e. Co 2g/L) strongly inhibit bacterial growth and activity.
One of the existing solutions is to isolate another already metal-tolerant strain (such as Lysinibacillus sphaericus). (source :
I have read that it is possible to adapt a bacterial culture to a high concentration of metals by serial acclimatisation, where the bacteria are successively grown in a medium of increasing metal concentration. (source : 10.1016/j.wasman.2018.07.010)
Can this method be adapted to ureolytic bacteria? Are there any examples?
If not, what other methods would you suggest?
Thank you !!
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You can do it by adapting bacterial culture to a high concentration of metals by serial acclimatization. and I can suggest you to induce mutation in your strain, using a UV lamp. this process is called"induced mutagenesis" it's easy and generally used for random selection of mutants. in your case, it's a positive selection of high-concentration heavy metals resistant mutants. good luck.
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Kindly discuss your ideas and viewpoints on the origin of life and the RNA world hypothesis.
What are the contradictory views on why researchers are still unsure about the origin of life through RNA or such analogous molecular intermediate pre-cursors preceding its existence?
"The general notion of an “RNA World” is that, in the early development of life on the Earth, genetic continuity was assured by the replication of RNA and genetically encoded proteins were not involved as catalysts. There is now strong evidence indicating that an RNA World did indeed exist before DNA- and protein-based life. However, arguments regarding whether life on Earth began with RNA are more tenuous. It might be imagined that all of the components of RNA were available in some prebiotic pool and that these components assembled into replicating, evolving polynucleotides without the prior existence of any evolved macromolecules. A thorough consideration of this “RNA-first” view of the origin of life must reconcile concerns regarding the intractable mixtures that are obtained in experiments designed to simulate the chemistry of the primitive Earth. Perhaps these concerns will eventually be resolved, and recent experimental findings provide some reason for optimism. However, the problem of the origin of the RNA World is far from being solved, and it is fruitful to consider the alternative possibility that RNA was preceded by some other replicating, evolving molecule, just as DNA and proteins were preceded by RNA." - Robertson and Joyce
[This is as per the explanation by Michael P Robertson and Gerald F Joyce in the article: "The origins of the RNA world." published in the Cold Spring Harb. Perspect. Biol. 4, a003608 (2012).]
The scientific community must resolve this contradicting conjecture through rational discussion and debate backed by strong experimental evidence on what must be the pre-cursor molecule to the Origin of Life if it is not RNA!
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One of the issues that is holding the concept of an RNA world back from being more scientifically useful - irrespective of whether there ever was such a thing - is that we don't use the idea in the scientific way it was intended. Just like any other prebiotic scenario, it is not (nor has it ever been) a scientific hypothesis. In fact, scenarios are usually not intended as such. Scenario authors from all niches (including RNA world) have pointed out that scenarios themselves are untestable. However, they guide thinking and allow to conceive of hypotheses that are testable. If we go through the old literature we find very explicit passages to support this fact.
For the specific authors advanced in the question, G.F. Joyce and L.E. Orgel, we have a passage from 1999 in "prospects for understanding the origins of the RNA world". (The RNA World 2nd ed. 49-77).
"The presumed RNA World should be viewed as a milestone, a plateau in the early history of life on earth. So too, the concept of an RNA World has been a milestone in the scientific study of life's origins. Although this concept does not explain how life originated, it has helped to guide scientific thinking and has served to focus experimental efforts."
You can find this point of view expressed in foundational work for all niches related to the popular scenarios today. But you can also find it for scenarios most people in origins have never heard of. E.g. the idea that celllular life started with terpenoids found in G. Ourisson and Y. Nakatomi's "the terpenoid theory of the origin of cellular life: the evolution of terpenoids to cholesterol. (1994) Chem & Biol. 1 11-23".
"The hypothesis provides an attractive way of ordering the terpenoids: like all evolutionary theories, it cannot be tested directly. The ideas summarized here do, however, suggest a multitude of experiments having some bearing on the fundamental and fascinating question: how did the first cells appear? We hope to carry out some of them."
A related line of thought - but highly influential - is the exposition by Harold J. Morowitz from 1992 in his book "Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis". If we go to the conclusion, we find this explicit clarification on the distinction between a genuine scientific theory and a scenario:
"at this stage of the thought process, it is important to focus on the hypothesis that intermediary metabolism recapitulates prebiotic chemical evolution. This hypothesis is not a strictly vulnerable theory in the Popperian sense, but it does provide us with a valuable heuristic method for using modern knowledge of biochemistry to search for events that have left their trace. If the intermediary metabolism of autotrophs does not recapitulate biogenesis, then the discontinuities will have to be explained."
More than 2 decades back, many authors made a clear distinction regarding this nuance. Scenarios are here to help: they guide thinking and design experiments. They only guide thinking in a scientifically meaningful direction as long as we can easily abondon scenarios and enthusiastically continue replacing them with new, more informed scenarios. A situation where a scenario gets entrenched and where researchers treat it as a scientific hypothesis is - by construction - hard to escape.
In fact, this is exactly the situation that many researchers have described around the 80s, when criticism mounted against the prebiotic broth scenario. The passage from Wächtershäuser's 1988 "Theory of a Surface Metabolism" is telling:
"The prebiotic broth theory has received devastating criticism for being logically paradoxical (11, 135), incompatible with thermodynamics (11, 144, 160), chemically and geochemically implausible (134, 136, 144), discontinuous with biology and biochemistry (160), and experimentally refuted (135, 160). The reason for the tenacity with which it is retained as accepted dogma has been forcefully and clearly stated by Scherer (126): "If this rejection is substantiated, there will remain no scientifically valid model of the selforganization of the first living cells on earth."
Clearly, the broth scenario had overstayed its welcome. One reason for this is that its 'claims' (which for a scenario can only be speculations) were too much in contradiction with claims from fields of science that do not suffer the same restrictions when it comes to testing and refuting their theories. One example of a very controversial idea that can be found in Haldane's formulation of a broth scenario, is the purported necessity of a long, highly functional protein randomly emerging from a soup, as an extremely rare event: we expect this to be prohibitively unlikely and hence a far from parsimonious explanation.
Quite a few of the critiques voiced against the prebiotic broth scenario are equally valid critiques of some scenarios we have today, including RNA world.
The RNA world is an old and multifaceted concept. There are contrasting formulations that make different claims (to be interpreted as speculations) about history. As with the prebiotic broth scenario (and any scenario), it has raised genuine scientific objections. These have remained largely unadressed, in spite of its long dominance.
It is instructive to bear in mind that scenarios don't come from nowhere. They're fairly detailed speculations about purported historical events. To make them, each author makes assumptions. Some of these concern speculations that later became testable, e.g. about chemistry and physics. You will find different scenario authors make different assumptions and different arguments (and flaws therein). There's an inevitable bias here with respect to the fields an author is trained in. Some of the foundational assumptions in popular scenarios like RNA world are at least 50 years old, but some unchallenged assumptions date back to a literature that is more than a century old. A time before IUPAC, modern quantum mechanics, genetics, and so forth.
That has been enough time to forget that scenarios like RNA world are by construction not testable hypotheses and that they were not intended as such. Scenarios are here to guide thinking, to inspire experiments. The best thing a scenario can do for us, is generate insights that spur us to change the way we think and thereby necessitate replacing our old scenarios with new ones, and repeat the cycle. The science coming out of the community today is a lot more conducive to doing that than previously.
The same cannot be said for the rather myopic RNA-centric framing of a question in the cited passage, which attempts to elevate RNA world to more than a scenario. Rather than forcing ourselves to think about the rather narrow and outdated proposal by Joyce and Robertson, ("consider the alternative possibility that RNA was preceded by some other replicating, evolving molecule"), it is more productive to critically revisit all the things that have been assumed and argued when the concept of an RNA world was conceived and how which of these premises are considered valid or plausible today, and which ones back then. Is there a formulation of RNA world for abiogenesis that is logically sufficient? And if so is it logically necessary that abiogenesis proceeded this way?
It is also instructive to check how much of the logic was sound. e.g. the rhetorical tricks employed in RNA world introduce all sorts of hidden assumptionsm.
As an example of the latter: some still justify an RNA world by the party trick 'chicken-and-egg' question 'protein or RNA, which came first?', only to conclude with 'RNA, it encodes proteins' and hastily conclude with an even stronger 'RNA-first' for abiogenesis. 'chicken-and-egg' fallacies are nothing new in origins. In fact, they were already identified as such long ago. E.g. in chapter 8 of "Seven Clues to the Origin of Life (1985)" by Cairns-Smith, there's an illustrated passage detailing that these types of paradoxes in origins frame the question in a manner that prevent us from considering scaffolds.
"
The fact is that even the so-called simple organisms such as E. coli are very complex enterprises with all sorts of things going on together. There is plenty of scope for accidental discoveries of effective new combinations of subsystems. It seems inevitable that every so often an older way of doing things will be displaced by a newer way that depends on a new set of subsystems. It is then that seemingly paradoxical collaborations may come about.
To see how, consider this very simplified model - an arch of stones: This might seem to be a paradoxical structure if you had been told that it arose from a succession of small modifications, that it had been built one stone at a time.
scaffolds that starts like this:
This might seem to be a paradoxical structure if you had been told that it arose from a succession of small modifications, that it had been built one stone at a time. How can you build any kind of arch gradually? The answer is with a supporting scaffolding. In this case you might have used a scaffolding of stones. First you would build a wall, one stone at a time:
Then you would remove stones to leave the 'paradoxical' structure.
"
It should be noted that in 2022, even in RNA-world, very few scholars remain that find RNA-first a convincing idea. As a scenario, however, it is not useless: it is instructive to consider what the underlying ideas are that at some point in time made such a highly specific idea compelling to so many of us.
A fixed motif in scenario papers is to start explicitly and implicitly assuming a few things about what chemistry can and cannot do and some properties of abiogenesis. These sort of assumptions used to be spelled out routinely, also outside scenario papers. Let me give two examples.
The original 1953 paper for the "Frank Model" "on spontaneous asymmetric synthesis", has the passages
".. the defining property of a living entity the ability to reproduce its own kind ...
confining attention to chemical molecules, the complexity of any having this essential property of life is likely to be great enough to make it highly improbable that it has a centre of symmetry."
(*I should point out that Frank makes an important error here: the capacity for molecular reproduction is not a molecular property but a property of a reaction network. If we add an additional thermodynamic criterion this property is autocatalysis and we can then check this claim from the IUPAC definition: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C00876. It turns out there are trivial ways to make small networks that have this property https://chemrxiv.org/engage/api-gateway/chemrxiv/assets/orp/resource/item/60c74d67469df42226f44295/original/emergent-autocat-animation.gif.)
The point to retain here is that Frank considers it to be generally accepted that one can assume this property to be prohibitively rare in chemistry. This belief was wideheld, and we can e.g. read in "the units of selection" (1970) by Lewontin a summary on scientific views on abiogenesis
"The present view ... Since there was no autocatalysis, there was no reproduction or heredity and so no possibility of natural selection."
The coacervates in Oparins scenario were notably invoked to adress this issue.
When it comes to assumptions in scenarios, this systematically involved conjecturing that chemistry 'in the wild' intrinsically and deterministically becomes a 'mess', undergoing no meaningful complexification, and for which no reproduction and evolution can reasonably be expected. From there, it appears that no process of abiogenesis should conceivably occur naturally, and thereafter some specific sequence of exceptional events is proposed as plausible, because it appears to be the sole contender.
Let us make more explicit why this is not an innocent procedure:
We still find our understanding of 'basic chemistry' to be plagued with limitations and long-lived misinterpretations (e.g. 2 days ago we learned that methyl substitution destabilizes radicals instead of the textbook knowledge that it stabilizes them ).
Moving beyond the basics, we by and large lack a lot of formal theory, experiment, or even a simple reference frame for the things that happen then. Joyce and Robertson honor the tradition of purporting from the outset that 'chemistry in the wild' becomes an intractable mess. The issue is that we don't know at all if that's the case. We cannot assume this from the outset, we need to extensively study it. We require extensive experiments and theory and a reference frame for all the phenomenology associatied with complex systems (e.g. multiple components, compartments, multiple forms of nonequilibrium driving, length scales, time scales).
In making the routine assumption of 'messy, intractable chemistry that can neither complexify nor multiply', we have decided in advance that, once we finally understand 'chemistry in the wild' with its 'so-called intractible mixtures', it cannot have any bearing on abiogenesis. Let alone explain it.
That is a disproportionately bold conjecture about fundamental science, and a very consequential one: all historical scenarios - RNA world being one out of many - have been justified by formulating conjectures of this sort (many authors also insist on other properties, e.g. chemistry being deterministic). Clearly, it should be the first priority of everyone in the field to test this conjecture, by extensively and rigorously studying complex chemical systems as an end in itself. If the conjecture is correct, it provides an important validation for historical scenario approaches. If the conjecture turn out wrong, we are in a much better position to conceive of more scientifically informed scenarios, but potentially the approach will change entirely.
In presenting it as such, I am making it appear as if it could be an open question whether the chemical conjectures underpinning our scenarios in origins may be true or not. In fact, we have learned quite a few things in the meantime. And some clumsy mistakes were made elsewhere.
- Determinism:
When it comes to chemistry being deterministic (a key tennet of e.g. Sutherlands scenario and Wächtershäusers surface metabolism): upon critical evaluation of what is known of basic chemistry this idea becomes unacceptable, especially when considering the chemical processes on the surface of a planet, as opposed to a quick reaction in pyrex.
1) insofar as it is reproducible, modern chemistry owes much of it to big strides of standardization in glassware, methodology, synthesis protocols (e.g. usage of stirring bars).
2) lab chemistry exhibits many forms of contingency. This is particularly the case when it comes to phase behavior, e.g. habit modification, polymorphism. Aspirin purportedly has 8 reported polymorphs, phenobarbitone 13.
3) glassware is cleaned between reactions, thereby making successive reactions in the same glassware independent. In nature, this property of independence is absent. In fact, effort to make an evolutionary classification of minerals are rooted in the opposite: that certain minerals start to form conditional on the presence of certain others. (https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/ammin/article/104/6/810/570840/An-evolutionary-system-of-mineralogy-Proposal-for)
- Autocatalysis:
A first issue to get out of the way is the misconception that autocatalysis is prohibitively rare. A prominent PI in origins (RNA world, not a chemist) told me that chemists throughout history have found exactly one example. Claims about the contents of a literature one cannot realistically have read in a lifetime is a common error we can find in the origins literature. Below are some reviews.
I should stress that these reviews discuss examples from a few niches in chemistry. These reviews do at least allow to have 100s of counterexamples to dubious claims about no autocatalysis in chemistry, but it's only a small fraction. Virtually all branches of chemistry have regular reports of autocatalysis, but very few focus on autocatalysis in its own right. And hence most branches do not review their reported examples.
By critically examining the IUPAC definitions, one can show that autocatalysis is dramatially more widespread than long thought. In part, this is because the definition applies to a wealth of situations where the term is not routinely employed. By examinging the requirements of autocatalysis as an emergent network property, one can demonstrate that this property emerges particularly readily in a heterogeneous / multicompartment context. With the disclaimer that I'm an author I refer to the following:
- Messy chemistry:
Refreshing counterexamples are afforded by the literature on systems chemistry and dynamic combinatorial libraries.
In the context of origins, a recent work that is greatly aiding in fixing our misconceptions is : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-022-00956-7
Where a reaction of purported immense complexity is found to exhibit highly reproducible and ordered behavior as function of environmental inputs. How chemistry exactly works on this level is still poorly understood. I think I do, but it'll have to await peer review. But we cannot in good scientific conscience take for granted anymore that chemistry becomes messy and intractable. When we do the experiments, we see something very different.
in conclusion, I want to come back to the final point of the question
"The scientific community must resolve this contradicting conjecture through rational discussion and debate backed by strong experimental evidence on what must be the pre-cursor molecule to the Origin of Life if it is not RNA!"
No. The sientific community should strive to do what it can justify scientifically. Those that find it fruitful to relegate the RNA world - which is not a hypothesis - are justified in doing so. Notably because it is is founded on scientifically refuted premises and logical errors.
Those that find ways to make it fruitful to keep it are justified in doing so: it's a scenario, one can draw inspiration from it. Perhaps a thoroughly altered version can be developed that fixes previous issues.
Above all else, RNA is an amazing molecule that has been used for fundamental research that concerns everyone in origins, and will continue to do so irrespective of how serious the RNA world scenario is still taken.
What the origins of life community needs, first and foremost, however, is concern itself with more important matters.
Complex chemistry needs to be studied thoroughly on an experimental and theoretical level.
New scenarios are needed. And these scenarios should no longer require chemistry to have properties it doesn't have, and vice versa. These scenarios should also explicitly be appraciated for what they are, an for what they're not. They're here to help, to guide thinking, inspire experiments, produce testable predictions, update our beliefs. They are not scientific hypotheses in and of themselves.
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I am a student of biotechnology and an independent SARS CoV-2 researcher from India. For finding the academia research status and analysis of the integration of innovation with research, I have created a set of Multiple choice type questions about your experience as a researcher. The google form requires nothing but your honesty and openness for research. Feel free to ask questions and DM. The questions will assist in gauging the level of innovation and writing in academia.
If possible, please do forward this little form to your fellow researchers and other amazing scientists. I would be highly grateful.
Thank you
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Hello sir, Asif Bilal
Just saw your response. It means a lot to me. Thank you so much for your time.
If possible, could you please forward the survey to other amazing scientists, It would help me a lot.
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Hi,
I wonder if anyone knows how to use sample release reagent from Sansure Biotech ?
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Hi,
The supplier claims that their "sample release reagent" (nucleic acid release technology), can lyse pathogens at room temperature very fast, with no need to heating, centrifuging or replacing tubes, the sample DNA/RNA can be extracted quickly through simple operations. The reagent is applied for the pretreatment of nucleic acid molecules, to release them from specimens, then the released nucleic acids can be used for clinical in vitro diagnosis or for the detection through appropriate apparatus.
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The 2023 ranking is available through the following link:
QS ranking is relatively familiar in scientific circles. It ranks universities based on the following criteria:
1- Academic Reputation
2- Employer Reputation
3- Citations per Faculty
4- Faculty Student Ratio
5- International Students Ratio
6- International Faculty Ratio
7- International Research Network
8- Employment Outcomes
- Are these parameters enough to measure the superiority of a university?
- What other factors should also be taken into account?
Please share your personal experience with these criteria.
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Cenk Tan; There are, of course, several websites that rank the universities worldwide. However, QS is the most famous of which.
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I was able to study biology but not enough to understand the difference between B-phycoerythrin and R-phycoerythrin. Quite "simply" could someone answer to this question? Can we switch from one form to another? :)
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B-Phycoerythrin (B-PE), a fluorescent protein from phycobiliprotein family, is isolated from cyanobacteria and eukaryotic algae. Its primary absorption peak is at 545nm with a secondary peak at 563nm. B-PE consists of α, β and γ subunits and is present as (αβ)6γ. B-PE and the closely related R-PE are the most intensely fluorescent phycobiliproteins having orange fluorescence. They are significantly brighter and more photostable than conventional organic fluorophores. B-PE labeled streptavidin, primary and secondary antibodies have been widely used in applications such as flow cytometry and multi-color immunofluorescent staining.
While
R-phycoerythrin (R-PE) is an intensely bright phycobiliprotein isolated from red algae that exhibits extremely bright red-orange fluorescence with high quantum yields. It is excited by laser lines from 488 to 561 nm, with absorbance maxima at 496, 546, and 565 nm and a fluorescence emission peak at 578 nm. R-PE is a large molecule used for fluorescence-based detection, primarily in flow cytometry, microarray assays, ELISAs, and other applications that require high sensitivity but not photostability.
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Hello everyone:
Like Darwin reading Malthus "for amusement", I've been reading the 2nd chapter, "Systematics and Evolution", of the 3rd edition of "Vertebrate Biology", by Donald W. Linzey (2020).
When reading the section on "Species and Speciation" in this chapter, and more specifically when reading about the founder effect and its relationship with the origin of new species, I found the following sentence: "(...) speciation can proceed rapidly since only a portion of the original gene pool is normally present in the small, newly relocated population, and NATURAL SELECTION CAN WORK MORE QUICKLY ON SMALLER GENE POOLS" (capital letters are mine).
To the best of my knowledge, mathematical models of natural selection include parameters like relative fitness and/or selection coefficients, whereas population size is included in models for the evolutionary effects of random genetic drift.
So, do you have any idea on the reasons why natural selection could go faster in small populations (i.e., small gene pools)?
Any help will be welcome. Best regards, and thanks in advance:
Jose.
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Hello; Small samples taken from a large pool will not reflect the gene distribution of the larger pool. Founders' effects, genetic bottlenecks, etc. are what are under discussion and the basis for many examples of speciation. The extreme example might be parthenogenetic species arising from hybridization. Fun stuff! Cheers, Jim Des Lauriers
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Hi! I am a 3rd year biology student, and currently working on my undergraduate thesis, which has an objective to determine the presence of metallothioneins on several candidates from different microalgae genera. But, I don't have a background on various bioinformatics tool, may I ask if you know any software that could possible help me achieve my study's motive? Thank you
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You might want to look at this recent paper:
Bioinformatic prediction of putative metallothioneins in non-ciliate protists
Sergio Balzano and Angela Sardo