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Category: biological

Evolution is traditionally associated with a process of increasing complexity and gaining new genes. However, the explosion of the genomic era shows that gene loss and simplification is a much more frequent process in the evolution of species than previously thought, and may favor new biological adaptations that facilitate the survival of living organisms.

This evolutionary driver, which seems counter-intuitive—” less is more” in genetic terms—now reveals a surprising dimension that responds to the new evolutionary concept of “less, but more,” i.e., the phenomenon of massive gene losses followed by large expansions through gene duplications.

This is one of the main conclusions of an article published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, led by a team from the Genetics Section of the Faculty of Biology and the Institute for Research on Biodiversity (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, in which teams from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have also participated.

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Can biology be explained entirely in terms of chemistry and then physics? If so, that’s “reductionism.” Or are there “emergent” properties at higher levels of the hierarchy of life that cannot be explained by properties at lower or more basic levels?

Alan C. Love, Ph.D., is a professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. He also serves as director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.

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Continue reading “Alan Love — Philosophy of Reductionism & Emergence” | >

Y ou could be forgiven for thinking that the turn of the millennium was a golden age for the life sciences. After the halcyon days of the 1950s and ’60s when the structure of DNA, the true nature of genes and the genetic code itself were discovered, the Human Genome Project, launched in 1990 and culminating with a preliminary announcement of the entire genome sequence in 2000, looked like – and was presented as – a comparably dramatic leap forward in our understanding of the basis of life itself. As Bill Clinton put it when the draft sequence was unveiled: ‘Today we are learning the language in which God created life.’ Portentous stuff.

The genome sequence reveals the order in which the chemical building blocks (of which there are four distinct types) that make up our DNA are arranged along the molecule’s double-helical strands. Our genomes each have around 3 billion of these ‘letters’; reading them all is a tremendous challenge, but the Human Genome Project (HGP) transformed genome sequencing within the space of a couple of decades from a very slow and expensive procedure into something you can get done by mail order for the price of a meal for two.

Since that first sequence was unveiled in 2000, hundreds of thousands of human genomes have now been decoded, giving an indication of the person-to-person variation in sequence. This information has provided a vital resource for biomedicine, enabling us, for example, to identify which parts of the genome correlate with which diseases and traits. And all that investment in gene-sequencing technology was more than justified merely by its use for studying and tracking the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Ibogaine—a psychoactive plant derivative—has attracted attention for its anti-addictive and anti-depressant properties. But ibogaine is a finite resource, extracted from plants native to Africa like the iboga shrub (Tabernanthe iboga) and the small-fruited voacanga tree (Voacanga africana). Further, its use can lead to irregular heartbeats, introducing safety risks and an overall need to better understand how its molecular structure leads to its biological effects.

In a study appearing in Nature Chemistry, researchers at the University of California, Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics (IPN) report the successful of ibogaine, ibogaine analogs and related compounds from pyridine—a relatively inexpensive and widely available chemical.

The team’s strategy enabled the synthesis of four naturally occurring ibogaine-related alkaloids as well as several non-natural analogs. Overall yields ranged from 6% to 29% after only six or seven steps, a marked increase in efficiency from previous synthetic efforts to produce similar compounds.

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DARPA’s Intensity-Squeezed Photonic Integration for Revolutionary Detectors (INSPIRED) seeks to break the quantum noise limit

Optical detectors are essential for converting light into measurable signals, enabling a wide range of critical technologies, such as fiber-optic communication, biological imaging, and motion sensors for navigation. However, their sensitivity is fundamentally limited by quantum noise, which prevents the detection of extremely faint signals in the most precision-demanding fields.

As the world marks the 100-year anniversary of the initial development of quantum mechanics with the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, DARPA’s Intensity-Squeezed Photonic Integration for Revolutionary Detectors (INSPIRED) program is working to break through the quantum noise limit. By harnessing “squeezed light,” INSPIRED seeks to develop compact, cost-effective optical detectors that can operate at unprecedented sensitivities – allowing signals previously buried in quantum noise to be clearly detected.

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This is superlongevity! ♾️

“One shark, measuring five meters, was found to be at least 272 years old, with an upper age estimate of more than 500 years (392 +/- 120 years). Another specimen was at least 260 years old, potentially exceeding 400 years. “We definitely expected the sharks to be old, but we didn’t expect that it would be the longest-living vertebrate animal,” Nielsen said.”

The Greenland shark holds the title as the longest-lived vertebrate on Earth, with some individuals potentially reaching 500 years of age. This elusive deep-sea predator, found in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, has fascinated scientists due to its remarkable lifespan. Its slow growth rate and mysterious biology have made it a subject of ongoing research, shedding light on how some species defy the limits of aging.

A major breakthrough in understanding the longevity of Greenland sharks came from a research team led by Julius Nielsen, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen. Nielsen and his colleagues conducted a study that revealed a Greenland shark estimated to be at least 272 years old, with some models suggesting an upper age limit of nearly 500 years.

Continue reading “Scientists discover 500-year-old shark, Earth’s longest living vertebrate” | >

This is a draft version of the Brain Emulation Challenge video.

This version is intended for an audience with some neuroscience background or interest.

This video is provided with the hope to generate useful critical feedback for improvements.

Why take the brain emulation challenge? Why take a challenge that is providing virtual brain data from generated neural tissue?

Continue reading “The Brain Emulation Challenge” | >

A pair of physicists at the University of Crete has found that some types of biological magnetoreceptors used by various creatures to navigate, operate at or near the quantum limit. In their paper published in the journal PRX Life, I. K. Kominis and E. Gkoudinakis describe how they worked the problem of magnetic sensing in tiny animals in reverse by putting bounds on unknown quantum boundaries, and what it showed about the navigation abilities of certain animals.

Prior research has shown that many creatures use the Earth’s as a navigation aid. Some sharks, fish and birds, for example, use it to help them traverse long distances. Different animals also have different types of magnetic sensors, including radical-pair, induction and magnetite mechanisms.

Radical-pair works by sensing correlations between unpaired electrons attached to certain molecules. Induction works by turning energy in the magnetic field into electricity and then sensing the electrical charge. And magnetite-based magnetoreception involves sensing the movement or orientation of tiny iron crystals in the body, similar to a human-made compass.

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Identifying and characterizing secreted virulence proteins are fundamental for deciphering microbial pathogenicity. Here, the authors introduce a practical training framework to improve protein language model representations by integrating biological features and prior information through contrastive learning.

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