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What is information in biology? information is essential for analyzing data and testing hypotheses. But what is information in evolution, population genetics, levels of selection, and molecular genetics? Is computational biology transformational?

Continue reading “Terrence Deacon — Philosophy of Biological Information” »

Physicists in Germany have used visible light to measure intramolecular distances smaller than 10 nm thanks to an advanced version of an optical fluorescence microscopy technique called MINFLUX. The technique, which has a precision of just 1 angstrom (0.1 nm), could be used to study biological processes such as interactions between proteins and other biomolecules inside cells.

In conventional microscopy, when two features of an object are separated by less than half the wavelength of the light used to image them, they will appear blurry and indistinguishable due to diffraction. Super-resolution microscopy techniques can, however, overcome this so-called Rayleigh limit by exciting individual fluorescent groups (fluorophores) on molecules while leaving neighbouring fluorophores alone, meaning they remain dark.

One such technique, known as nanoscopy with minimal photon fluxes, or MINFLUX, was invented by the physicist Stefan Hell. First reported in 2016 by Hell’s team at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, MINFLUX first “switches on” individual molecules, then determines their position by scanning a beam of light with a doughnut-shaped intensity profile across them.

Joscha Bach is a German artificial intelligence researcher and cognitive scientist who works on on cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent systems. We got connected over the hard problem of consciousness — namely, why do people seem to think it’s so hard? During our conversation we deal with the foundational questions of the technological future being built in Silicon Valley, the fever dream of machine intelligence, and try to understand why people seem to think that there’s even such a thing as the hard problem of consciousness in the first place.

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Continue reading “Is There Really a Hard Problem of Consciousness? — Joscha Bach, Artificial Intelligence Researcher” »

Plastic pollution is everywhere, and a good amount of it is composed of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). This polymer is used to make bottles, containers and even clothing. Now, researchers report in Environmental Science & Technology that they have discovered an enzyme that breaks apart PET in a rather unusual place: microbes living in sewage sludge. The enzyme could be used by wastewater treatment plants to break apart microplastic particles and upcycle plastic waste.

Microplastics are becoming increasingly prevalent in places ranging from remote oceans to inside bodies, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they appear in wastewater as well.

However, the particles are so tiny that they can slip through water treatment purification processes and end up in the effluent that is reintroduced to the environment. But effluent also contains microorganisms that like to eat those plastic particles, including Comamonas testosteroni—so named because it degrades sterols like testosterone.

Professor Michael Levin explores the revolutionary concept of diverse intelligence, demonstrating how cognitive capabilities extend far beyond traditional brain-based intelligence. Drawing from his groundbreaking research, he explains how even simple biological systems like gene regulatory networks exhibit learning, memory, and problem-solving abilities. Levin introduces key concepts like “cognitive light cones” — the scope of goals a system can pursue — and shows how these ideas are transforming our approach to cancer treatment and biological engineering.

The biological and technological race to live forever is very much underway.

These tiny organisms break the microbe age record by 1,900,000,000 years.

Large meteorite impacts must have strongly affected the habitability of the early Earth. Rocks of the Archean Eon record at least 16 major impact events, involving bolides larger than 10 km in diameter. These impacts probably had severe, albeit temporary, consequences for surface environments. However, their effect on early life is not well understood. Here, we analyze the sedimentology, petrography, and carbon isotope geochemistry of sedimentary rocks across the S2 impact event (37 to 58 km carbonaceous chondrite) forming part of the 3.26 Ga Fig Tree Group, South Africa, to evaluate its environmental effects and biological consequences.

Fluorescence microscopy is a powerful tool in biology, allowing researchers to visualize the intricate world of cells and tissues at a molecular level. While this technique has revolutionized our understanding of biological processes, imaging large and complex 3D structures, such as embryos or organoids, remains a challenge. This is especially true when studying intricate details beyond the optical resolution limit using structured illumination microscopy (SIM).