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| bio | website | |
|---|---|---|
| location | Cambridge, United Kingdom | |
| age | 28 | |
| visits | member for | 1 year, 5 months |
| seen | 11 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 62 |
I’m a bioinformatics PhD student at EMBL-EBI and the University of Cambridge but I’m originally from Berlin.
My thesis project is about the regulation of tRNA expression in mammals.
Here’s my …
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Dec 29 |
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Could Junk DNA be used as a Turing Machine by nature? @nico Redundancy is required for a fail-safe system, it provides a direct evolutionary advantage. And while our bodies aren’t particularly efficient in many aspects that cannot be controlled by evolution (laryngeal nerve …), most isolated systems under evolutionary control have been highly optimised. For instance, a eukaryotic cell’s energy turnover is orders of magnitude more efficient than any engine or generator ever created by humans (intelligently designed). |
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Dec 29 |
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Why did the process of sleep evolve in many animals? What is its evolutionary advantage? Point 1 seems to be a circular argument (or flat out wrong): if the animal weren’t sleeping it could hunt / forage for food. Even in sleep, we expend some energy so this calculation will always come out favourably on the side of staying awake. |
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Dec 29 |
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How many human proteins have a solved 3D structure? Notice that “solved” is very subjective. Not all of the structures are of high quality, and some of them are just plain incorrect due to experimental errors. |
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Dec 29 |
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Could Junk DNA be used as a Turing Machine by nature? @nico If it didn’t code or regulate, it would be garbage which the cells have to drag around with them. More expensive to replicate and maintain, more material cost (just because it’s longer and requires more material to form), requires more space in the cell. There are evolutionary disadvantages to having a large, partly non-functional genome. |
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Dec 29 |
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Why do we age? or Do we have a theory of senescence? I’ve never been completely convinced by the wear & tear argument: germ cells (and all unicellular organisms) are direct descendants of the “arch” cell. Not just genetical, but cytoplasmatic, through cell division. If the wear & tear argument were naively true, germ cells would long have ceased working. Now, it may be that preventing wear & tear is so expensive that metazoa have disbanded it in somatic cells (where it’s expendable). But I’ve never heard that mention. |
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Dec 29 |
awarded | Supporter |
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Dec 29 |
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Has there been any observation of species adapting the evolution process? I don’t think this entails a change in the underlying mechanism. At least, not one that has been demonstrated yet. “social selection” is a very diffuse term. Does it actually differ from natural selection? Personally, I doubt it: it can be readily explained in terms of natural and sexual and kin selection so this would be the most parsimonious explanation. |
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Dec 27 |
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Why are there nail growth differences between humans and other mammals? @Maxim The ability to regenerate legs (or other parts). |
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Dec 26 |
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Why are there nail growth differences between humans and other mammals? @Maxim Not in humans. But in plenty of other animals, and there doesn’t seem to be a fundamental reason why this couldn’t in principle work in humans. |
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Dec 26 |
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Why are there nail growth differences between humans and other mammals? @Maxim Of course there are mechanisms for that. How else does a leg know when to stop growing? Or any other organ in the body. Most of the mechanisms behind that aren’t yet completely understood though. |
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Dec 18 |
awarded | Autobiographer |
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May 26 |
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Why does looking at bright light triggers sneezing in some people? “not entirely understood” clashes with the explanation you give just below. The mechanism is entirely understood. |
