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Take a moment to appreciate the scale of this accomplishment. In four billion years of evolution, life has only managed to evolve six known pathways that start
by smaili 10y ago
Take a moment to appreciate the scale of this accomplishment. In four billion years of evolution, life has only managed to evolve six known pathways that start with carbon dioxide and build more complex molecules. In just a few years, a bunch of grad students in Zurich added a seventh.
Well done and kudos to all those involved!
- cronjobber 10y agoMaybe this one did evolve, but others displaced it for reasons we don't know yet. I sure hope that's what happened. I'm somehow emotionally attached to all the life forms plodding along using only those rotten old pathways, I don't know if I took kindly to lab life taking over.
- raverbashing 10y agoBut remember, that's evolution It's like a very old system that has been patched and repatched over and over and never refactored. 10 steps that kinda works works. Efficiencies only play a part when one resource is really limited, and even then there might be other ways of making up for it
- AlphaSite 10y agoWell no, it try's to refactor its self, randomly deleting genes, until it deletes one which can be loved without, removing some vestigial pathway or organ.
- raverbashing 10y agoYeah, that happens. But also this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA