Ed Yong tells us at the Atlantic: In the 150 years since Schwendener, biologists have tried in vain to grow lichens in laboratories. Whenever they artificially united the fungus and the alga, the two partners would never fully recreate their natural structures. It was as if something was missing—and Spribille might have discovered it. He […]
Symbiosis
Evolution: Cells “hiring” functions they can’t do (endosymbiosis)
If a creature could exist that had very little information, it probably wouldn’t be of much use in a symbiosis.
Steve Meyer speaks up for Lynn Margulis
If either McClintock or Margulis had been Darwin’s girls, they would have been science heads at an approved high school somewhere. Hip. hip.
sRNA for Quorum Sensing: Evidence for CSI?
Bacteria demonstrate intra-species communication that is species specific using a partner with a communication molecule. Bacteria are also “multilingual” with a generic trade language for interspecies communication. Bacteria control tasks by signal producing and receiving receptors with a signal carrier. The tasks bacteria conduct depend on the concentration they sense of self bacteria versus generic […]
Symbiosis of life forms “almost hilariously complicated”
“The researchers discovered the already complex three-way symbiosis actually depends on genes from six different organisms — three more than the number of species that currently exist in the symbiosis.”