Biology Week 5 - The Complexity of Life

1. I, personally, believe that the emergence of new species is happening all the time (how exciting!), and that this can occur in many ways. Of course, the easiest way to imagine divergence is in the case of geographic isolation (like in the Galapagos), where an isolated population adapts to its surroundings in a different way than its closest relatives who have different environmental pressures. Evolution and divergence of macroscopic beings without this isolation is hard to conceptualize because of the fairly long length of generations, but I bet that if we knew more about microscopic life forms we could watch species emerge every day without geographic isolation. I imagine this happening through some sort of selective reproduction or spontaneous mutations. Also, it's also worth considering that an existing species may evolve into a new species without any divergence, and where do you draw the line between new and old?

2. As for the chicken and egg question, I always vote egg! An animal cannot spontaneously turn into something else (think dinosaur --> chicken), and, ruling out divine intervention, there is no other way for the chicken to be first. 

Biology Week 4 - The Pattern of Life

1. Animal Intelligence
Our views of human intelligence seem both so simplistic and so unnecessary! Why do we seek our signs of "intelligence" from our animal cousins, anyways? What is it that we want to prove? Surely we can tell that animals are capable, communicative, and adaptive. Personally, that is all the evidence of intelligence that I need. The differences between animals' behavior is certainly interesting, but creating an intelligent hierarchy does nothing but maintain our own pedestal in the animal kingdom.

2.Wow! The game of Life is awesome. It looks like ice patterns or something being scattered by a stream. For such a contrived, technological thing, it struck me as very "natural" looking - ordered but not necessarily symmetrical.

Biology Week 3 - Genetic Evolution

1.
a. "99% of the most critical DNA sites are identical in human and chimp genes"
This finding is interesting to me for two reasons. First, it is always intriguing to note the idea of "critical DNA" in research, how it effects the reception of the findings, and how it reflects our understanding of our own genome. That some DNA is "critical" leaves the rest to be... what? Secondly, I love the idea that we are so genetically similar to chimps! Yay for pan sapiens! It's comforting to think about having close planetary cousins, almost like discovering a long lost relative.

b. Wow! Prokaryotes are awesome. I had no idea that they moved at 30 mph, or that our own mitochondria are prokaryotes. It is also terrifying to think that we may be creating diseases that we cannot fight with our use of antibiotics. Eukaryotes may be more complex, but it seems like the prokaryotes will win out in the end after all.

2. Cybernetics and Autopoiesis
The study of cybernetics and classification of "autopoietic" both rely on the concept of a closed system and the relative scale of observation. Studying engineering, we talked a lot about systems and their borders - distinguishing a system as "closed" or "open"... though, of course, no system is ever truly "closed". Similarly, it seems to me that no system could ever be truly autopoietic or allopoietic, because every tiny cell and every giant planet is a part of a larger system. So, my question is: is the universe autopoietic? What if it were allopoietic? What comes after infinity?

Biology Week 2 - Evo-Devo

1. I find the concepts studied in evo-devo to be both interesting and important, particularly research into the commonality of species origin and the study of environmental stimulus on gene expression. Understanding our close relationship/kinship with fellow animals is a worthy pursuit, especially if this understanding leads to increased respect for the lives of the animals we eat or for wild animals' habitats. However, as was mentioned in class, this respect and understanding for other animals can be found in other cultures without this research, so perhaps we could and should try to get in touch with the commonality of life, with or without genomes. I am also particularly interested in the idea of gene expression through environmental stimulus because of how it could effect our understanding of embryonic development. It could it change the way we approach pregnancy and prenatal care! Also, how fascinating to think about this as it relates to surrogate pregnancy.

2. Thank you, Darwin! Although Dawinism perhaps does not tell the full story of evolution and species differentiation, I believe that Darwin's work and research have allowed for incredible positive change. To understand that two different looking birds could, in fact, be incredibly close relatives who happened to evolve in different environments is a profoundly important realization in how it informs the way we view other people and other creatures on the planet. Also, as discussed by the article "Why Darwinism Matters", the ways that Darwinism has allowed us to move away from the idea of a universal Truth is a great step towards universal inclusivity and understanding. Yay! The argument in Answers in Genesis is true, that evolution has been used to justify racism... but, excuse me, so has religion?

Biology Week 1 - Our Biological World

1. I think the article about multitasking and the gender divide was interesting in that it brought up a few questions for me. First, do we really know enough about our brain function to distinguish between two "modes of operation" (multitasking and single-mindedness) and to discount societal influences on behavior of participants; second, why do we like thinking about differences between men and women and is the leap from these findings to understanding meta societal structures valuable; and third, if we considered anything other than the gender binary, would the results of this study been more interesting? As for the first question, my general assumption is "no" - that we neither have an adequate grasp of our own brain function nor any awareness of how social structure influences our "innate" abilities to perform tasks. Therefore, even though I think the study is harmless and interesting, I don't know that I find it useful. As to the second question, perhaps studies of this sort are part of the effort to better understand ourselves in general, in which case I can get behind the effort, but they so often seem to rather be an attempt to confirm a social belief or observation that may, in fact, have no biological basis at all. To assume that the reason the women in study were able to more efficiently locate restaurants on a map, complete problems, answer a phone call, and search for a lost key in a field with a strict time limit is thanks to the traditional model of women at home and men out hunting seems like an absurd leap in logic. The third question, of course, has no answer because I cannot envision a world without the gender binary, but it's fun to think about!

2. Ha! Speaking of hypothesizing about the differences between males and females... the first article to turn up on the UC Berkeley evolution website was this one:  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/140513_ychromosome, which discusses why the Y chromosome is important, too! It seems fairly clear to me that the Y chromosome would have similar functions to the X chromosome, with less information because of its small size.