Scientists Found a Paradox in Evolution; It May Become the Next Rule of Biology | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Found a Paradox in Evolution; It May Become the Next Rule of Biology

popularmechanics.com

38 pointsisaacfrond12 comments

The article mentions that some cell actually depend on 'unstable' conditions for their optimal metabolism. This may be surprising as maintaining homeostasis (constant environment) is a 'fundamental rule' of cell biology at the cell level... yet ideas such that fasting might be beneficial to cell metabolism do suggest the principle does apply. Which isn't very surprising, in macro-biology animals or plants evolve in a way that make them expect varying conditions (e.g. cold in the winter, hot in summer). At a certain point the organisms become dependent on the expected instability. Natural selection operates on the environment it is given.

It would be more interesting to know if they define precisely what instability is (expected or unexpected, etc), but I haven't read the paper.

From the paper:

“ instability is defined as the relative propensity of the subunit to undergo a physical disintegration of its structure, either spontaneously, or through the action of degradative agent such as an enzyme.”

Relative to what? other subunits.

The caption to figure 2: “ If the B subunit is less stable than A subunit (indicated in gray font), this leads to a reduced population of AB replicators and free A subunits; this represents a more complex system because it yields a set with two distinct members.”

It’s not clear to me if this is the most general example they can think of, but later in the paper they relate SAI to a particular cellular automaton, Langton’s loop.

Overall 6/10, requires work, more erudite reviewers/promoters, or quantamagazine to determine if the field is indeed interesting.

The first thing I thought of was how high performance aircraft have unstable aerodynamic flight profiles: because if you want to turn, then you want the tiniest control input to give you the hardest possible manoeuvre (then let the control software prevent crashing).

Perhaps it's same as the Taleb's antifragility, but hard to say, the article avoids any deeper details.

Any reason biologists name these “rules” or “laws” rather than “heuristics”?

Because of all the short vikings and tall Vietnamese?

"Allen’s Law, which dictates that body shapes in endotherms (warm-blooded animals) adapt to climatic conditions—short and stocky helps retain heat in cold climates, while tall and lanky helps dissipate heat in warmer ones. "

Which has exceptions. So not a law, but a heuristic.

Doesn't seem even a very good heuristic...

So what? Different cell types have different states of differentiation. For example, an M0 macrophage can become an M1 or M2 macrophage depending on its environment.

How is instability novel in a domain centered around the concept of adapt or die?

Quote: It may have fewer than many of the other sciences, but biology does have two dozen or so “rules”—broad generalizations about the behavior or nature and evolution.

Now, USC researchers want to add a new rule called “selectively advantageous instability (SAI),” which explores how instability can actually benefit a cell and a cellular organism.

The flipside of this “rule” is that SAI can also be a key factor to things like disease and aging, so understanding this process could aid in exploration of those biological processes.

What's new about that? That has long been acknowledged as the reason sexual reproduction outcompetes asexual reproduction, and as the reason immune systems are so different person to person.

And it's also obvious from the fact that different regions of the genome mutate at different rates.

What’s new I think would be the generalisation and its acceptance as a rule.

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