Yes and no. It is reproducible in the sense that it can make organisms adapt in more and less the same way to a particular environment but the genetic composition will be remarkable different in each case.

Click here to read the excellent article describing experiments carried on microbes for thousands of generations which explores the roles of chance and history in evolution.

We have a perfect example of life on earth. This life, made up of DNA, has a physical existence due to molecules and structures which compose it. But, is physical existence a prerequisite of life? Can life exist as information only with no physical basis?

The answer to the question lies in our viewpoint. If we take life as an exclusive property of earth, then yes of course, life must have physical existence. But, if we consider to be a universal property (as much as gravity), then we can have interesting life forms (majority of which we may never detect).

The article TESTING DARWIN rekindled my interest in digital life. It is a form of life in which entities live solely as information. This kind of life can easily be implemented on a computer and an excellent example of this implementation is Avida. The basic premise is that the principles of evolution/life are universal and are not necessarily be restricted to earth-based life.

Avida is a system in which digital organisms (computer programs) compete with each other for computer resources. This is similar to competition between organisms for limited resources available in the environment. All the properties of life: adaptation, species, natural selection, etc. can be observed in Avida. I guess, it is a perfect tool for one to observe life’s struggle easily at home.

In the article I mentioned, the author draws parallel between the DNA based life and the digital organisms of Avida. Since, Avida can provide huge amounts of data in no time, we may easily study various aspects of life without having to wait for ages. He tries to answer few of the mysteries of life such as: Evolution of sex, co-operation, irreducible complexity, extra-terrestial life, etc.

The article is a must read and the software is a must download.

P.S: My personal opinion is that life is what you describe and there is no reason why we should not consider strings of bit (which evolve) as entities of life.

As the urban areas expand, the natural habitat of many organisms such as birds, squirrels, etc. These organisms are facing evolutionary pressure in new (urban) environment. Cities have many things which are not found naturally, and hence organisms are getting fooled into evolving for the new surroundings.

Even the abundance of food in urban areas can be devastating for a species. See this article for more details.

What can be exciting uses of human tongue:
1. Licking ice-cream
2. Having chocolate
3. Routing information from camera to brain (huh?)

Yes, researchers have developed a device, appropriately, called “Brain Port”. It uses tongue to transmit information from mechanical devices such as cameras, sonar, etc. to the brain. They have already demonstrated better viewing (using this device) underwater. In long term, I guess the device has potential to render sci-fi into day to day reality.

What interests me is how the brain deals with this extra information which it has never encountered before? I am talking about signals from SONAR, 360 deg camera, etc. Does it rewire itself? All the senses have dedicated sections where they are processed? Where are these new signals from extra senses processed?

It would be very interesting, if I find the answer.

Meanwhile, click here to read the news story.

Hey, see this interesting profile of the life of pioneer John Koza and his Invention Machine. Click here to read it.

I hit upon the paper titled “Immune Programming”. On its first impression, it seemed to me that it is about programming the immune system. However, in actuality, the paper is about the automatic generation of computer programs using the approaches inspired by vertebrate immune system.

The various processes of immune system such as hypermutation, clonal selection, replacement, etc. have been implemented to produce a framework called Immune Programming.

It is indeed quite admirable that evolution has invented so many things that scientists don’t stop discovering new and novel things which might be useful and applicable.

Click here to read more about Artificial Immune Systems.

The plant Arabidopsis has been genetically modified to suck up the poisonous metal Aresenic from the soil and transport it to the leaves, which could be dried and stored. This, according to me, is a very good example where BioHacking is actually doing something good for the community and the environment.

Click here to read the full news story.

Researchers have improved the Bioprinter technology to make more dense organs. These Bioprinters print the complete tissues (and organs, in near future) which are very much alive. This is a vital step towards replacement of old and worn out tissues. Imagine the future where you will be able to buy bioprinters and grow your very own organs, tissues.

How about hacks with these bioprinters to generate completely novel tissues and organs? E.g. growing ultrasonic sensor for human body, or growing two more arms, etc. There will be endless oppurtunities for creativity once these bioprinters are made available.

Click here to read the news.

In the past week I observed three peculiar biological phenomena. I wonder why these were evolved. The observations:

1. I have a money plant at my place. I observed that only alternate leaves on a stem dry up. Why?
2. The bananas start ripening from bottom to up. Why not top to bottom? Or, all at once?
3. Crying is very contagious. When someone cries, you get an urge to cry even though you have no particular emotion or desire for crying. Why this?

Nature is perfect designer. Nothing is evolved per se. Everything has a reason. So, these must have perfectly valid advantages for the organism. What are these?

Phew…. Finally, the first draft of my research paper “Evolved Cellular Automata for Protein Secondary Structure Prediction” is complete. I guess the paper needs more revisions. But, I am feeling quite happy as this is my first research paper. Below is the abstract and full-text of the preprint.

Abstract: Cellular Automata has been used in this paper to predict the protein secondary structure. The research was inspired by the fact that cellular automata uses localized interactions to simulate global phenomena. The protein folding problem seems to be of exactly same nature; individual residues interact locally to give the protein chain a unique global conformation. The protein’s residue sequence was input to the cellular automaton and the rules for updating states were evolved using Genetic Algorithms to maximize Q3 on the dataset RS126. The maximum Q3 of around 58.2% was obtained, which although is low, but demonstrates the applicability of this simple technique on a problem as complex as protein structure prediction. There can be numerous possible improvements over this method, some of which are listed in the paper.

Click Here to read the complete paper in PDF format.

P.S: The program is coded in Python language. I will be releasing the code+dataset soon.