Human microproteins encoded by small ORFs have been found to be functional. By comparing the corresponding sequences across vertebrate genomes, Vakirlis et al. show that a number of these originated “from scratch” from noncoding sequences, including two very recent cases unique to humans. These cases demonstrate the rapid evolution of genetic novelty.
“This concept that cells ‘fight back’ against modified RNA is of practical importance, as it suggests how one might improve the effectiveness of RNA therapy.”
Researchers from the Smidt Heart Institute have unveiled a novel concept — they harnessed modified messenger RNA (mRNA) technology used in creating the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, which can be a significant step in the evolution and creation of biological pacemakers.
Luismmolina/iStock.
The investigators identified how biological pacemaker cells could “fight back” against therapies to biologically correct abnormal heartbeat rates. They’ve also found a new way to “boost the effectiveness” of RNA therapies by controlling the “fighting back” activity, they said in a release.
How ethical would aliens be?
Ethics derived from biological evolution can be harsh — parasitism, invasiveness, and survival at all costs. Ethics derived from human culture is far more benevolent. Would alien ethics be based more on biology or culture? Let’s hope the latter.
Posted on big think, direct weblink at.
Posted on Big Think.
Investigators from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai have identified how biological pacemaker cells—cells that control your heartbeat—can “fight back” against therapies to biologically correct abnormal heartbeat rates. The research also uncovered a new way to boost the effectiveness of RNA therapies by controlling this “fighting back” activity.
This novel concept, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Reports Medicine, is an important step in the evolution and creation of biological pacemakers—which aim to one day replace traditional, electronic pacemakers.
“We are all born with a specialized group of heart cells that set the pace for our heartbeats,” said Eugenio Cingolani, MD, senior author of the study and director of the Cardiogenetics Program in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. “But in some people, this natural heartbeat is too slow, leading to the need for an electronic pacemaker.”
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The Fermi Paradox ask us how in a Universe so vast and ancient we seem to be the only intelligent civilization around, with no older interstellar alien empires visible in the galaxy. But could extinction play a role in that, or might extinction events instead drive evolution forward?
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The Fermi Paradox: Exctinction.
Episode 204, Season 5 E37
Written by:
Summary: Findings support the theory that microRNAs are essential for the development and evolution of intelligent life.
Source: Dartmouth College.
Octopuses have captured the attention of scientists and the public with their remarkable intelligence, including the use of tools, engaging in creative play and problem-solving, and even escaping from aquariums.
Posted in alien life, evolution
If we re-ran Earth’s clock, would life arise again? Would another civilization eventually evolve? Astrobiology is faced with trying to contextualize our place in the Universe using just a single data point. But even a single data point contains information. The key to unlocking it is a careful understanding of the selection biases at play and intricacies of Bayesian statistics. Today, we’re thrilled to present to you our explainer video of a new research paper led by Prof David Kipping that provides a direct quantification of the odds of life and intelligence on Earth-like worlds, based on our own chronology. Presented & Written by Prof. David Kipping.
This video is based on research conducted at the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, New York. You can now support our research program directly here: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support.
Previous episodes to catch up on:
► “Watching the End of the World”: https://youtu.be/p9e8qNNe3L0
► “Why We Could Be Alone”: https://youtu.be/PqEmYU8Y_rI
References:
► Kipping, D. 2020, “An Objective Bayesian Analysis of Life’s Early Start and Our Late Arrival”, PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/12/1921655117
► Spiegel, D. & Turner, E., 2011, “Bayesian analysis of the astrobiological implications of life’s early emergence on Earth”, PNAS 109,395 https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3835
► Carter, B. 2007, “Five or six step scenario for evolution?”, Int. J. Astrobiology 7,177 : https://arxiv.org/abs/0711.1985
► O’Malley-James, J. et al. 2013, “Swansong biospheres: refuges for life and novel microbial biospheres on terrestrial planets near the end of their habitable lifetimes” Int. J. Astrobiology 12, 99: https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.5721
► Bell, E. et al., 2015, “Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon”, PNAS 112, 14518: https://www.pnas.org/content/112/47/14518
► Smith, H. & Szathmáry, E. 1995, “The Major Transitions in Evolution”, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
► Schopf, W. et al., 2018, “SIMS analyses of the oldest known assemblage of microfossils document their taxon-correlated carbon isotope compositions”, PNAS 115, 53: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/1/53
Video materials & graphics used:
► Berkeley Lab/Sloan Sky Digital Survey: https://youtu.be/08LBltePDZw.
► Life Beyond by melodysheep: https://youtu.be/SUelbSa-OkA
► K2-18b animation by ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser: https://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1916b/
► Earth 4k by NASA/ESA/M.Kornmesser: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/earth_2015_4k/
► Galaxy spinning animation by Huy Trường Nguyễn: https://youtu.be/VhowJ3OZ2BM
► Earth timelapse from NASA DSCOVR EPIC: https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov.
► Animation of GJ1214b by ESO/L. Calçada: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1047a/
► Roulette table by steveh552: https://youtu.be/7VtnB8tS2Ys.
► Sky timelapse by National Geographic: https://youtu.be/xTvvQ65jWVs.
► Milky Way animation by Stefan Payne-Wardenaar: https://vimeo.com/330625918
► Outro by Carl Sagan from his book Pale Blue Dot.
► Thumbnail image licensed through StockFresh.com, image #8872987 by RAStudio.
Movies/TV scenes used:
► Agora (2009)/Focus Features.
► The Martian (2015)/20th Century Fox.
► Noah (2014)/Paramount Pictures.
Our default intuition when it comes to consciousness is that humans and some other animals have it, whereas plants and trees don’t. But how sure can we be that plants aren’t conscious? And what if what we take to be behavior indicating consciousness can be replicated with no conscious agent involved? Annaka Harris invites us to consider the real possibility that our intuitions about consciousness might be mere illusions.
Our intuitions have been shaped by natural selection to quickly provide life-saving information, and these evolved intuitions can still serve us in modern life. For example, we have the ability to unconsciously perceive elements in our environment in threatening situations that in turn deliver an almost instantaneous assessment of danger — such as the intuition that we shouldn’t get into an elevator with someone, even though we can’t put our finger on why.
But our guts can deceive us as well, and “false intuitions” can arise in any number of ways, especially in domains of understanding — like science and philosophy — that evolution could never have foreseen. An intuition is simply the powerful sense that something is true without having an awareness or understanding of the reasons behind this feeling — it may or may not represent something true about the world.
‘I almost died on the way out,’ said the six-foot-two tall archeologist who lost 25 kgs to enter a 17.5-centimeter cave.
Researchers claim to have discovered new evidence of extinct human species who lived in the underground caves of modern-day South Africa.
“We have massive evidence. It’s everywhere,” said Berger, who reported the findings in a press release and a Carnegie Science lecture at the Martin Luther King Jr.
Gulshan Khan/Getty Images.
The archeological findings reveal that Homo naledi, a prehistoric human species used fires to prepare food and navigate in the darkness of underground caves, according to South African paleoanthropologist and National Geographic explorer Lee Berger.
Mammals run the gamut of social organization systems, ranging from loose, ephemeral interactions like aggregations of jaguars in the South American wetlands to the antlike subterranean societies of naked mole-rats (SN: 10/13/21; SN: 10/20/20).
But marsupials — a subgroup of mammals that give birth to relatively underdeveloped young reared in pouches — have traditionally been considered largely solitary. Some kangaroo species were known to form transient or permanent groups of dozens of individuals. But among marsupials, long-term bonds between males and females were thought rare and there were no known examples of group members cooperating to raise young. Previous work on patterns of mammalian social evolution regarded about 90 percent of examined marsupial species to be solitary.
“If you look at other [studies] about some specific species, you will see [the researchers] tend to assume that the marsupials are solitary,” says Jingyu Qiu, a behavioral ecologist at CNRS in Strasbourg, France.
