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Why are tides a forcing function? Marine life has been perfectly content just not going near a beach.
by stavros 1y ago
Why are tides a forcing function? Marine life has been perfectly content just not going near a beach.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Why are tides a forcing function? "Nucleotide formation and polymerization are both more favored thermodynamically when subunit and nucleotide concentrations increase and the water concentration decreases (i.e., at low water activity)" [1]. Tide pools provide a regularly-cycling low-water and high-water environment. (And you get thermocycling, nutrient refreshment, and a path to the oceans, too.) They're not a forcing function, generally, because we don't know how life formed. But I believe they're close to one in a RNA-first or metabolism-first origin-of-life universe. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07389-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07389-2
- stavros 1y agoVery interesting, thank you!
- sleepy_keita 1y agoI was thinking more on the lines of "if marine life never found itself stranded on land, it wouldn't need to evolve to survive on the land"