<div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><span style="border-collapse:separate"><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><span style="border-collapse:separate"><div><div style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:13px;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Nice comment Rafal, your post clarified what I glossed over - thank you!   :)</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">I posited that systems tend to increase in complexity, but as you correctly point out a biological system is not defined solely at the orgainismal level (such as, yes, poor little male barnacles, eyeless cave fish and toads, and even at the organ level such as the appendix, or at the DNA level such as in acumulation of some of the "junk" DNA, etc) but also at the ecosystem level. Individual orgamisims can and do adapt by simplifying, as often this is biologically "cheaper" and thus advantagous locally (to the organisim itself). </span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">One of my favorite examples of this loss-of-function happening at the biomoleular level is the Biebricher et al series of papers on Q-beta replicase, a viral RNA-replicating enzyme that, when put into an undemanding (i.e., nutrient rich, with no need to infect other cells to reproduce), loses much of its structure due to a rapid loss of sequence information as it undergoes multiple cycles of replication, as the structural function (for replication) is no longer needed. I thnk its fascinating that this enzyme loses so much information so fast - such is the power of evolutionary adaptation! </span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">best,</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Regina</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">-----------------------------</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Message: 6</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 22:09:12 -0400</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">From: Rafal Smigrodzki <</span><a href="mailto:rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com" target="_blank" style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com</a><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">></span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">To: ExI chat list <</span><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">></span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Subject: Re: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 199, Issue 71</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Message-ID:</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">        <</span><a href="mailto:CAAc1gFinsaP3mn_PqO6yRkYFdxEp4pwj_dHLe9Xpn7sB%2BzE1XQ@mail.gmail.com" target="_blank" style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">CAAc1gFinsaP3mn_PqO6yRkYFdxEp4pwj_dHLe9Xpn7sB+zE1XQ@mail.gmail.com</a><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">></span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 2:31 PM Re Rose via extropy-chat <</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" style="font-size:small;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> wrote:</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> Ben - Great question! People have attempted to answer this over decades</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> and along the way discovered transposons and "jumping genes". For the</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> details you could look up the work of prof Barbara McClintock, also profs</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> Andrew Pohorille (of NASA Ames) and Stuart Kauffman.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">></span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> Basic idea is that sub-systems of highly complex, hierarchical systems can</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> split off and transfer from one system to another. Viruses are usually</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> considered non living because they are obligate parasites and co-opt other</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> organisims' metabolisms to propagate.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">></span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">> So they did not evolve to be a simpler system. They evolved from       complex </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">systems as a sub-system, not as separate self-sufficient organisms. They </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">are not even metabolically complete - ie, they can't live on their own, or </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">replicate on their own, and instead depend utterly on hosts.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">### Dunno. There are multiple cases of animals and plants undergoing</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">dramatic simplification of their function during both phylogeny and</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">ontogeny. There are parasites that started out with having a nervous system </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">and then devolved to just chunks of flesh. There are sessile marine animals </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">that start out as free-swimming, active larvae and then radically simplify </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">their body, while usually increasing in size. Animals that lose senses </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">after moving to caves.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">There is no general tendency for any given species to become more complex.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Depending on the situation, a species can evolve for more complexity or </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">devolve - and the actual course of evolution depends on the availability of </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">ecological niches adjacent to the niche currently occupied by that species.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">For many species, the mutational catastrophe imposes hard limits on</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">available configuration space - they can't just build more complexity</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">because the speed of information loss due to random mutations exceeds their </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">ability to accumulate new and useful (i.e. fitness-enhancing) information.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On the other hand, the ecosystem as a whole tends to become more complex - </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">the existence of one level of complexity (i.e. improved intracellular </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">signaling, improved DNA repair, targeted DNA mutation) opens the space to </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">explore next levels of development (respectively for the above examples, </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">multicellularity, long chromosomes, adaptive immune systems), and with </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">enough species available these new levels are explored, eventually opening </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">even more opportunities for building complexity. Some species evolve, some </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">devolve but the whole ecosystem (ecosphere) gets bigger and more </span><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">complicated, at least until the next asteroid strike.</span><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">Rafal</span><div class="gmail-yj6qo"></div><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>