How does life create order from chaos? And just what is life, anyway? Leading physicist Paul Davies argues that to find the answers, we must first answer a deeper question: 'What is information?' To understand the origins and nature of life, Davies proposes a radical vision of biology which sees the underpinnings of life as similar to circuits and electronics, arguing that life as we know it should really be considered a phenomenon of information storage. In an extraordinary deep dive into the real mechanics of what we take for granted, Davies reveals how biological processes, from photosynthesis to birds' navigation abilities, rely on quantum mechanics, and explores whether quantum physics could prove to be the secret key of all life on Earth. Lively and accessible, Demons in the Machine boils down intricate interdisciplinary developments to take readers on an eye-opening journey towards the ultimate goal of science: unifying all theories of the living and the non-living, so that humanity can at last understand its place in the universe.
Category: Microbiology
👓 Falling asleep in your genes: biology | Economist Espresso
Humans spend around a third of their lives asleep. But the molecular and genetic mechanisms that control sleepiness are mysteries. Now researchers have shown that a gene called nemuri could be one of the main drivers. In a study on fruit flies, neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania found that when they suppressed the activity of this gene, the flies woke up easily and had difficulty sleeping. Conversely, when they ramped up nemuri’s activity, the flies effortlessly entered the land of nod. Intriguingly nemuri, which encodes a small protein secreted by brain cells, was also shown to help the flies fight off bacterial infections. It seems as though sleep is a crucial part of the body’s immune response to infection or illness. Anyone sceptical of the recuperative powers of a good night’s rest now has evidence their doctors and mothers were right—sleep really does help. The results were published this week in Science.
🔖 The Demon in the Machine by Paul Davies | Allen Lane (2018)
How does life create order from chaos? And just what is life, anyway? Leading physicist Paul Davies argues that to find the answers, we must first answer a deeper question: 'What is information?' To understand the origins and nature of life, Davies proposes a radical vision of biology which sees the underpinnings of life as similar to circuits and electronics, arguing that life as we know it should really be considered a phenomenon of information storage. In an extraordinary deep dive into the real mechanics of what we take for granted, Davies reveals how biological processes, from photosynthesis to birds' navigation abilities, rely on quantum mechanics, and explores whether quantum physics could prove to be the secret key of all life on Earth. Lively and accessible, Demons in the Machine boils down intricate interdisciplinary developments to take readers on an eye-opening journey towards the ultimate goal of science: unifying all theories of the living and the non-living, so that humanity can at last understand its place in the universe.
👓 ‘I predict a great revolution’: inside the struggle to define life | the Guardian
Paul Davies thinks combining physics and biology will reveal a pattern of information management
Very nice profile by @iansample in the @guardian of Paul Davies and his new book The Demon in the Machine. Paul’s book is a very nice statement of intent to answer Schrödinger’s question, and honest about what we don’t know. https://t.co/9FeHArKaA5
— Philip Ball (@philipcball) January 26, 2019
👓 Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test | CBC
Last spring, Marketplace host Charlsie Agro and her identical twin sister, Carly, bought DNA ancestry kits from five of the most popular companies in the industry. Find out why some of the results they received left a team of computational biologists at Yale University baffled.
🎧 “The Daily”: The Ethics of Genetically Editing Babies | New York Times
A scientist in China claimed to have created the world’s first gene-edited human beings. How should the U.S. respond?
🎧 Episode 097 Applied Mathematics & the Evolution of Music: An Interview With Natalia Komarova | HumanCurrent
In this episode, Haley interviews Natalia Komarova, Chancellor's Professor of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Komarova talks with Haley at the Ninth International Conference on Complex Systems about her presentation, which explored using applied mathematics to study the spread of mutants, as well as the evolution of popular music.
👓 The year ahead: genetics | Economist Espresso
Soon two American biotechnology firms hope to offer couples undertaking in vitro fertilisation the chance to screen embryos before they are implanted. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is already widely used to test for chromosomal abnormalities or specific genetic disorders. But MyOme and Genomic Prediction plan to reconstruct the whole sequence of an embryo’s genome using just a few cells from a biopsy and genetic sequences of both parents. They can then, in theory, calculate the risk the embryo will develop a wide range of different diseases in later life—including ailments that are extraordinarily complicated, involving thousands of genetic variants. By selecting between different embryos, those undergoing IVF can optimise the health of their progeny in a way that those who conceive naturally cannot. That raises ethical concerns. Although both firms will screen embryos for disease risk only, there is no reason why traits such as height or intelligence might not be selected in the same way.
Reply to Andy Gonzalez about NIMBIOS Workshop
Biological and Bio-Inspired Information Theory(14w5170)
Perhaps it’s time for a follow up conference?
🔖 Theory Of Self Reproducing Automata by John Von Neumann, Arthur W. Burks (Editor) | 9780252727337
👓 Adaptable lizards illustrate key evolutionary process proposed a century ago | Science Daily
The 'Baldwin effect' has now been demonstrated at the genetic level in a population of dark-colored lizards adapted to live on a lava flow in the desert.
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
One explanation has been that many of an animal’s traits are not fixed, but can change during its lifetime. This “phenotypic plasticity” enables individual animals to alter their appearance or behavior enough to survive in a new environment. Eventually, new adaptations promoting survival arise in the population through genetic changes and natural selection, which acts on the population over generations. This is known as the “Baldwin effect” after the psychologist James Mark Baldwin, who presented the idea in a landmark paper published in 1896. ❧
September 11, 2018 at 08:57AM
Journal article available at: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(18)30899-6
👓 The harm of harmless jokes | lu popolvuh – Medium
A #MeTooSTEM story about requesting a change in tradition
🔖 Proceedings for ALIFE 2018: The 2018 Conference on Artificial Life
This volume presents the proceedings of ALIFE 2018, the 2018 Conference on Artificial Life, held July 23rd-27th. It took place in Tokyo, Japan (http://2018.alife.org). The ALIFE and ECAL conferences have been the major meeting of the artificial life (ALife) research community since 1987 and 1991, respectively. As a Hybrid of the European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL) and the International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (ALIFE), the 2018 Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE 2018) will take place outside both Europe and the US, in Tokyo, Japan.
🔖 CNS*2018 Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience
Methods originally developed in Information Theory have found wide applicability in computational neuroscience. Beyond these original methods there is a need to develop novel tools and approaches that are driven by problems arising in neuroscience. A number of researchers in computational/systems neuroscience and in information/communication theory are investigating problems of information representation and processing. While the goals are often the same, these researchers bring different perspectives and points of view to a common set of neuroscience problems. Often they participate in different fora and their interaction is limited. The goal of the workshop is to bring some of these researchers together to discuss challenges posed by neuroscience and to exchange ideas and present their latest work. The workshop is targeted towards computational and systems neuroscientists with interest in methods of information theory as well as information/communication theorists with interest in neuroscience.