Tag: biology
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Patterns. Scarily visible…
How do the large-scale patterns we observe in evolution arise? A paper in the journal Evolution argues that many of them are a type of statistical bias caused by our unavoidably recent viewpoint looking back into the past. For example, the animals appear in the fossil record about 550 million years ago, in an enormous…
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Genes. Not important.
One of the great puzzles of evolutional biology is what induced certain living creatures to abandon solitary existence in favor of living in collaborative societies, as seen in the case of ants and other social, colony-forming insects. A major characteristic of so-called eusocial species is the division of labor between queens that lay eggs and…
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Built from glass…
Ever wondered how groups of cells managed to build your tissues and organs while you were just an embryo? Using state-of-the-art techniques he developed, UC Santa Barbara researcher Otger Campàs and his group have cracked this longstanding mystery, revealing the astonishing innerworkings of how embryos are physically constructed. Cells coordinate by exchanging biochemical signals, but…
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Essential for life…
How did life arise on Earth? Researchers have found among the first and perhaps only hard evidence that simple protein catalysts - essential for cells, the building blocks of life, to function - may have existed when life began. (1) We seek what was the essential ingredients for life. But what is essential? Could life…
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Dark data. Old fossils. Life long gone.
Researchers estimate that only 3 to 4 percent of recorded fossil locations from across the globe are currently accounted for in published scientific literature. Quantifying 'dark data' in fossil collections is a call to arms; heralds a digital revolution. (1) Once upon life was everywhere. Especially because we did not seek it. Now we started…
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