Dec 2, 2023 08:46 AM
(This post was last modified: Dec 2, 2023 07:33 PM by C C.)
The new quest to control evolution
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-q...-20231129/
EXCERPTS: Thousands of years ago, humans began to identify plants and animals with preferable traits and selectively breed them, which amplified these traits in their offspring. This approach gave us agriculture, one of the most transformative cultural inventions in human history. Later, artificial selection in animals and plants helped us understand genetics, and how genes evolve in populations. But as effective as it’s been, artificial selection is still fairly limited.
This is different from natural selection, the force that drives adaptive evolution on Earth, where there is no intentional actor doing the selecting. The selecting actor is not a human breeder, but nature itself, which selects the variants with the highest “fitness” — those with the greatest likelihood of surviving and producing healthy offspring. And when nature does the selecting, the outcomes can be difficult to predict.
Now biologists hope to dictate how evolution happens at the molecular level, and to exert as much direct control over the reproductive process as we do in crops. Can we orchestrate evolution, mutation by mutation, toward whatever outcome we prefer?
A regular column in which top researchers explore the process of discovery. This month’s columnist, C. Brandon Ogbunu, is an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Remarkably, we’re already partway there...
[...] From this example, it is becoming clear that controlling evolution — steering it toward certain outcomes — requires knowledge of how evolution will happen, along with the technology to intervene. So we can think of the problem through the lens of a simple equation: Control = prediction + engineering.
[...] In more recent work, scientists have generalized these approaches. Using ideas from quantum physics, a multidisciplinary team (including physicians, computer scientists and physicists) applied a method called counterdiabatic driving to shift populations toward predetermined goals... (MORE - missing details)
Could life exist in molecular clouds?
https://www.universetoday.com/164550/cou...ar-clouds/
EXCERPTS: Molecular clouds are massive clouds of gas and dust out of which stars form. They’re called molecular clouds because they’re mostly molecular hydrogen, though they can contain many different compounds. Though the clouds are filamentary in nature, they do form clumps of greater density that sometimes become stars.
Could life exist in such a tenuous environment? One researcher thinks the question is worth exploring. In a paper titled “Possibilities for Methanogenic and Acetogenic Life in a Molecular Cloud,” Chinese researcher Lei Feng examines the idea that life began in space as methanogens or acetogens, bacteria that produce methane and acetic acid as byproducts. These could be the precursors to Earth’s life, according to Feng.
“If methanogenic life exists in the presolar nebula, then it may be the ancestor of Earth’s life, and there are already some tentative evidences by several molecular biology studies,” Feng writes. (English is clearly not Feng’s first language, but it’s easy to see what he’s getting at.)
Feng’s exploration rests on the idea of panspermia...
[...] According to Feng, the calculations show that methanogenesis in molecular clouds can produce enough free energy to fuel life. “From the calculations, we found that the reaction of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or acetylene with hydrogen molecules releases sufficient Gibbs free energy to ensure the survival of molecular cloud life,” Feng explains.
These activities could even produce biosignatures, according to the author. “The consumption of carbon compounds by life activities may affect the distribution of organic molecules. It might be a possible trace signal of molecular cloud life,” he writes.
Feng’s hypothesis is that life could’ve begun in molecular clouds and spread to Earth and elsewhere. He says that methanogenic and acetogenic life could be the ancestors of Earth’s LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. LUCA is the common ancestral cell from which life’s three domains, Bacteria, the Archaea, and the Eukarya, originated... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-q...-20231129/
EXCERPTS: Thousands of years ago, humans began to identify plants and animals with preferable traits and selectively breed them, which amplified these traits in their offspring. This approach gave us agriculture, one of the most transformative cultural inventions in human history. Later, artificial selection in animals and plants helped us understand genetics, and how genes evolve in populations. But as effective as it’s been, artificial selection is still fairly limited.
This is different from natural selection, the force that drives adaptive evolution on Earth, where there is no intentional actor doing the selecting. The selecting actor is not a human breeder, but nature itself, which selects the variants with the highest “fitness” — those with the greatest likelihood of surviving and producing healthy offspring. And when nature does the selecting, the outcomes can be difficult to predict.
Now biologists hope to dictate how evolution happens at the molecular level, and to exert as much direct control over the reproductive process as we do in crops. Can we orchestrate evolution, mutation by mutation, toward whatever outcome we prefer?
A regular column in which top researchers explore the process of discovery. This month’s columnist, C. Brandon Ogbunu, is an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Remarkably, we’re already partway there...
[...] From this example, it is becoming clear that controlling evolution — steering it toward certain outcomes — requires knowledge of how evolution will happen, along with the technology to intervene. So we can think of the problem through the lens of a simple equation: Control = prediction + engineering.
[...] In more recent work, scientists have generalized these approaches. Using ideas from quantum physics, a multidisciplinary team (including physicians, computer scientists and physicists) applied a method called counterdiabatic driving to shift populations toward predetermined goals... (MORE - missing details)
Could life exist in molecular clouds?
https://www.universetoday.com/164550/cou...ar-clouds/
EXCERPTS: Molecular clouds are massive clouds of gas and dust out of which stars form. They’re called molecular clouds because they’re mostly molecular hydrogen, though they can contain many different compounds. Though the clouds are filamentary in nature, they do form clumps of greater density that sometimes become stars.
Could life exist in such a tenuous environment? One researcher thinks the question is worth exploring. In a paper titled “Possibilities for Methanogenic and Acetogenic Life in a Molecular Cloud,” Chinese researcher Lei Feng examines the idea that life began in space as methanogens or acetogens, bacteria that produce methane and acetic acid as byproducts. These could be the precursors to Earth’s life, according to Feng.
“If methanogenic life exists in the presolar nebula, then it may be the ancestor of Earth’s life, and there are already some tentative evidences by several molecular biology studies,” Feng writes. (English is clearly not Feng’s first language, but it’s easy to see what he’s getting at.)
Feng’s exploration rests on the idea of panspermia...
[...] According to Feng, the calculations show that methanogenesis in molecular clouds can produce enough free energy to fuel life. “From the calculations, we found that the reaction of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or acetylene with hydrogen molecules releases sufficient Gibbs free energy to ensure the survival of molecular cloud life,” Feng explains.
These activities could even produce biosignatures, according to the author. “The consumption of carbon compounds by life activities may affect the distribution of organic molecules. It might be a possible trace signal of molecular cloud life,” he writes.
Feng’s hypothesis is that life could’ve begun in molecular clouds and spread to Earth and elsewhere. He says that methanogenic and acetogenic life could be the ancestors of Earth’s LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. LUCA is the common ancestral cell from which life’s three domains, Bacteria, the Archaea, and the Eukarya, originated... (MORE - missing details)