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| The relationship between biology and geology; A speculative interpretation | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 23 2017, 03:04 AM (644 Views) | |
| Greta | Aug 23 2017, 03:04 AM Post #1 |
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Zygote
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Hi, I'm new here. I'd not heard of this forum before and just Googled what interested me most - "speculative biology forum" - expecting patchily relevant results. Really pleased that such a place exists! Anyway, enough blabbing ... tl:dr key points: 1. The siloing of geology and geology is practical but can be misleading 2. While life turns geology into biology, viruses turn biology back into geology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ever since seeing a remarkable demonstration of lifelike qualities in nonliving chemicals by Martin Hanczyc (TED Talk - The line between life and non-life) I have wondered about abiogenesis and the emergence of the first living cell from nonliving geology, at least by today's definitions. The term "evolution" only technically applies to biology, siloed from the chemical evolution that lead up to the emergence of life and subsequent biological evolution. This siloing is probably practical due to the special complexity of life, but in terms of actual reality, then geology and biology are not separate fields but parts of a continuum of development separated by abiogenesis. The separation of the fields appears to confuse the general public, as though there is a magical energy in life, rather than it being just one more self-sustaining emergence, along with atoms, molecules, and later stars, black holes and planets in the early universe, later multicellularity and humanity, etc. Current understanding of chemical evolution is that amino acids would have formed in energetic environments such as those affected by lightning and meteor strikes, volcanoes and, most notably, underwater volcanic vents. Over time these complex organic molecules assembled into proteins and then into polymers. Polymers aggregated into protobionts. The first replicator may have been a complex sugar, but the first robust replicator appears to be RNA, and its more complex successor, DNA. Prior to abiogenesis the Earth was basically covered in rocks and water. Then the first autotrophic life (LUCA) emerged. LUCA and its successors basically ate rocks, chemicals. As emergent life replicated it was effectively turning rocks into life like a slow motion life-loving King Midas. However, while autotrophic archaea were turning geology into biology, viruses emerged - both a new evolutionary line and a balancing agent. Viruses basically do the opposite of autotrophs - they turn life back into dead chemicals again (closer to the King Midas myth). There would have been a time in the primitive Earth when archaea were, poetically, basically the bringers of life and viruses the bringers of death. However, after billions of years of coevolution, viruses have become as essential agents of complex life and evolution as bacteria, acting like a biological solvent, thus speeding up evolution in the same way that water facilitates and speeds chemical breakdown. Critiques, tweaks, improvements, observations, additions? Cheers and thanks for reading Greta |
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| TAXESbutNano | Aug 23 2017, 03:33 AM Post #2 |
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I'm going back to basics.
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Viruses are actually pretty diverse and interesting in their own right, especially in how they can transfer genes. Ancient viral DNA in our genome, for example, allows embryos to implant by suppressing the immune system; while another in the emerald green sea slug both gave them algal DNA to steal chloroplasts and acts as a yearly killswitch. Check out the book Virolution if you can. |
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| Holben | Aug 23 2017, 03:42 AM Post #3 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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This is true but I think the way that we subcategorise some chemistry as geology and subcategorise some of both of those as biology is a very useful way of categorising things, and if we leave the study of life up to the chemists (or the physicists!) they'll have a bit too much on their plates. There are plenty of competing hypotheses- I have a favourite, but it's just as untestable as the rest. We rely completely on inferring from modern day experiments, and I'm not sure we'll ever know what the first heredity-carrying molecule was. Current thinking based on highly conserved enzymatic pathways across living things is that LUCA utilised chemiosmosis only to produce energy (and H2 and CO2 to produce biomass). Lithotrophy seems to have come somewhat later. No-one's sure when viruses first appeared, or where they came from, so the possibility that they arose several times is still up in the air. I don't think they provide much balance though- they don't even always kill the cells they infect. Viruses have definitely put selective pressure on organisms to evolve in response but it's a directional thing. If you're pressured to survive viral infection, it's likely you'll come out with ways to resist viral attack but the adaptation may provide no further benefit and in fact may be costly if the virus is not there in the environment. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 04:20 AM Post #4 |
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Adolescent
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Are giant viruses truly viruses? I'm unsure: they seem true lifeforms to me. Not sure if they are a window upon life's origins or a red herring. But its easy to refute ppl such as Hoyle, who thought we evolved from virii comprising dirty snowballs: true virii can exist only in ready-existent cells so cells come first. Seems to me virii are polyphyletic, degenerate organisms. Ppl here joke about biological plot twists where all protists are derived from humans, but if you count virii as evolving from actual organisms even once and regard them as members if clade Biota to be systemized, then this is something on a bigger scale: On an indirectly but nethertheless related note, can a cancer be a species? Some cancers are transmissible as afflicts the Tasmanian devil. What if this happens across species, for example a cancer of Neanderthal or Denisovan origin in modern humans. Would neanderthals then be among us, as a living species? Is the cancer a posthuman species? Or is there a reason it isn't a species? Could such a hypothetical cancer be back-engineered to recreate the ancestor? And have transmissible cancers phylogenies we haven't recognised: how distinct from their hosts might they be? Dinosaur cancers among birds today - or among mammals? What is a species, what is an organism, what justifies exclusion from taxonomic systematics or clade Biota? |
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| Greta | Aug 23 2017, 06:18 AM Post #5 |
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Zygote
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Thanks Nanotyranus. I had a scan of the book online and it looks interesting. |
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| Greta | Aug 23 2017, 06:59 AM Post #6 |
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Zygote
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Yes, the separation of geology and biology is practical, as is the separation of biology and sociology for that matter (even if most human behaviours could readily be narrated by David Attenborough). I suppose I am just very conscious that we are all part of the Earth, largely a thin, wet dynamic film on the outer edge of the planet's crust. Maybe I'm wrong or too idealistic, but I would like to see more studies of the planet as a whole as a living system, and including humanity and its works as part of the system as any other feature or organism.
Thanks Holben, that's good info. I was lumping the geosphere and hydrosphere together for brevity's sake (and in the spirit of the above would ideally include all the other domains/spheres including magnetosphere and magnetic field).
While some have developed symbiotic or benign relationships with cells, they still break down their target host cells to some extent, even if not fatally. As a side note, I love the concept of bacteriophages, which basically shove their little capsid DNA heads into their hosts - parasitism performed like fertilisation.
Agreed, although the relationships have become very complex over time https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160713100911.htm |
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| Greta | Aug 23 2017, 07:26 AM Post #7 |
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Zygote
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Yes, degenerate is a good term.
I see cancer as a retrograde (or degenerate, to use your word) takeover attempt by a group of rogue cells. Cancers can be triggered by viral or bacterial disease, or by repeated mechanical or chemical insult (amongst other things?). I guess one could say that cancers are a breakdown of eukaryotic cells to prokaryotes. Basically a group of cells goes crazy and grows in an uncontrolled way like a bacterial community, which is most unbecoming behaviour from otherwise more coordinated eukaryotic cells!
A nice description I've read is "organisms at the edge of life". |
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| Yiqi15 | Aug 23 2017, 07:30 AM Post #8 |
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Prime Specimen
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Damn, this thread is getting deep. Back on topic, what about proteins? Can they be considered life? Edited by Yiqi15, Aug 23 2017, 07:31 AM.
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Current/Completed Projects - After the Holocene: Your run-of-the-mill future evolution project. - A History of the Odessa Rhinoceros: What happens when you ship 28 southern white rhinoceri to Texas and try and farm them? Quite a lot, actually. Future Projects - XenoSphere: The greatest zoo in the galaxy. - The Curious Case of the Woolly Giraffe: A case study of an eocene relic. - Untittled Asylum Studios-Based Project: The truth behind all the CGI schlock - Riggslandia V.II: A World 150 million years in the making Potential Projects - Klowns: The biology and culture of a creepy-yet-fascinating being My Zoochat and Fadom Accounts - Zoochat - Fandom | |
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 07:59 AM Post #9 |
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Adolescent
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Can something such as rust ever be considered life? For hardcore spec bio, hypothesise DNA-free life like Peter Watts did with his plastic brittlestar aliens. Evolve it naturally from something inorganic, resembling rust.
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| Holben | Aug 23 2017, 08:05 AM Post #10 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Lots of good biologists like to see it the same way, at the most extreme Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, and the Medea hypothesis. There are some viruses, like the Adeno-associated virus, which are not known to have any cost at all to their host. You'd think that simply by using cellular resources there would be some cost but no pathology has been found. There are a few similar ones out there.
Definitely, like all coevolving organisms they have developed a number of intriguing relationships:
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 08:37 AM Post #11 |
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Adolescent
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Just two thoughts. 1. Could something like an antiviral eliminate the placentals? Nanotyrannus reminded us that placentals cannot procreate without viral DNA. Only placentals lack a barrier between the prenate and the mother. Fail to suppress an immune response and the clade disappears. Is this the most plausible handwavium for a world (nearly) without mammals? 2. Greta mentioned the similarity of bacteriophages to sperm cells. Imagine a world where the "sexes" evolved from a parasite and a host and recombination arose from organisms with different phylogenies. Is it possible? |
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| IIGSY | Aug 23 2017, 05:03 PM Post #12 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Thanks for the Easter egg In coming terraformed world project where the only organisms introduced are HeLa cells |
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Projects Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates Last one crawling: The last arthropod ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess) Potential ideas- Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized. Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal. Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents. Quotes Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups In honor of the greatest clade of all time More pictures Other cool things All African countries can fit into Brazil
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| TAXESbutNano | Aug 23 2017, 07:12 PM Post #13 |
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I'm going back to basics.
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It's as good a space bat as anything else, but IRL they'd not get that far since viruses with hosts are more successful than ones without, for obvious reasons. |
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| Yiqi15 | Aug 23 2017, 07:13 PM Post #14 |
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Prime Specimen
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That would be something. |
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Current/Completed Projects - After the Holocene: Your run-of-the-mill future evolution project. - A History of the Odessa Rhinoceros: What happens when you ship 28 southern white rhinoceri to Texas and try and farm them? Quite a lot, actually. Future Projects - XenoSphere: The greatest zoo in the galaxy. - The Curious Case of the Woolly Giraffe: A case study of an eocene relic. - Untittled Asylum Studios-Based Project: The truth behind all the CGI schlock - Riggslandia V.II: A World 150 million years in the making Potential Projects - Klowns: The biology and culture of a creepy-yet-fascinating being My Zoochat and Fadom Accounts - Zoochat - Fandom | |
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| kusanagi | Aug 23 2017, 07:15 PM Post #15 |
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Adolescent
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A world populated by HeLa cells reminds me of the Space Jockey guy from Prometheus. I have no idea how the cells would colonise the world though unless someone tinkered and engineered them a little bit first. Ofc any GMO distinct enough from its ancestor - should it have just one - doesn't fit the nomenclature: if its "unnatural" it doesn't count, but what of natural descendants of GMOs? |
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