All the conserved detailed results of evolution stored in DNA must be read, transcribed, and translated via an RNAmediated process. This is required for the development and growth of each individual cell. Thus, all known living organisms fundamentally depend on these RNA-mediated processes. In most cases, they are interconnected with other RNAs and their associated protein complexes and function in a strictly coordinated hierarchy of temporal and spatial steps (i.e., an RNA network). Clearly, all cellular life as we know it (...) could not function without these key agents of DNA replication, namely rRNA, tRNA, and mRNA. Thus, any definition of life that lacks RNA functions and their networks misses an essential requirement for RNA agents that inherently regulate and coordinate (communicate to) cells, tissues, organs, and organisms. The precellular evolution of RNAs occurred at the core of the emergence of cellular life and the question remained of how both precellular and cellular levels are interconnected historically and functionally. RNA-networks andRNA-communication can interconnect these levels.With the reemergence of virology in evolution, it became clear that communicating viruses and subviral infectious genetic parasites are bridging these two levels by invading, integrating, coadapting, exapting, and recombining constituent parts in host genomes for cellular requirements in gene regulation and coordination aims. Therefore, a 21st century understanding of life is of an inherently social process based on communicating RNA networks, in which viruses and cells continuously interact. (shrink)

First, I offer a short overview on the classical occidental philosophy as propounded by the ancient Greeks and the natural philosophies of the last 2000 years until the dawn of the empiricist logic of science in the twentieth century, which wanted to delimitate classical metaphysics from empirical sciences. In contrast to metaphysical concepts which didn’t reflect on the language with which they tried to explain the whole realm of entities empiricist logic of science initiated the end of metaphysical theories by (...) reflecting on the preconditions for foundation and justification of sentences about objects of investigation, i.e. a coherent definition of language in general, which was not the aim of classical metaphysics. Unexpectedly empiricist logic of science in the linguistic turn failed in the physical and mathematical reductionism of language and its use in communication, as will be discussed below in further detail. Nevertheless, such reflection on language and communication also introduced this vocabulary into biology. Manfred Eigen and bioinformatics, later on biolinguistics, used ‘language’ applied linguistic turn thinking to biology coherent to the logic of science and its formalisable aims. This changed significantly with the birth of biosemiotics and biohermeneutics. At the end of this introduction it will be outlined why and how all these approaches reproduced the deficiencies of the logic of science and why the biocommunicative approach avoids their abstractive fallacies. (shrink)

Natural genome editing from a biocommunicative perspective is the competent agent-driven generation and integration of meaningful nucleotide sequences into pre-existing genomic content arrangements, and the ability to (re-)combine and (re-)regulate them according to context-dependent (i.e. adaptational) purposes of the host organism. Natural genome editing integrates both natural editing of genetic code and epigenetic marking that determines genetic reading patterns. As agents that edit genetic code and epigenetically mark genomic structures, viral and subviral agents have been suggested because they may be (...) evolutionarily older than cellular life. This hypothesis that viruses and viral-like agents edit genetic code is developed according to three well investigated examples that represent key evolutionary inventions in which non-lytic viral swarms act symbiotically in a persistent lifestyle within cellular host genomes: origin of eukaryotic nucleus, adaptive immunity, placental mammals. Additionally an abundance of various RNA elements cooperate in a variety of steps and substeps as regulatory and catalytic units with multiple competencies to act on the genetic code. Most of these RNA agents such as transposons, retroposons and small non-coding RNAs act consortially and are remnants of persistent viral infections that now act as co-opted adaptations in cellular key processes. (shrink)

Investigation into the sequence structure of the genetic code by means of an informatic approach is a real success story. The features of human language are also the object of investigation within the realm of formal language theories. They focus on the common rules of a universal grammar that lies behind all languages and determine generation of syntactic structures. This universal grammar is a depiction of material reality, i.e., the hidden logical order of things and its relations determined by natural (...) laws. Therefore mathematics is viewed not only as an appropriate tool to investigate human language and genetic code structures through computer sciencebased formal language theory but is itself a depiction of material reality. This confusion between language as a scientific tool to describe observations/experiences within cognitive constructed models and formal language as a direct depiction of material reality occurs not only in current approaches but was the central focus of the philosophy of science debate in the twentieth century, with rather unexpected results. This article recalls these results and their implications for more recent mathematical approaches that also attempt to explain the evolution of human language. (shrink)

Current knowledge of the RNA world indicates 2 different genetic codes being present throughout the living world. In contrast to non-coding RNAs that are built of repetitive nucleotide syntax, the sequences that serve as templates for proteins share—as main characteristics—a non-repetitive syntax. Whereas non-coding RNAs build groups that serve as regulatory tools in nearly all genetic processes, the coding sections represent the evolutionarily successful function of the genetic information storage medium. This indicates that the differences in their syntax structure are (...) coherent with the differences of the functions they represent. Interestingly, these 2 genetic codes resemble the function of all natural languages, i.e., the repetitive non-coding sequences serve as appropriate tool for organization, coordination and regulation of group behavior, and the nonrepetitive coding sequences are for conservation of instrumental constructions, plans, blueprints for complex protein-body architecture. This differentiation may help to better understand RNA group behavioral motifs. (shrink)

Current research on the origin of DNA and RNA, viruses, and mobile genetic elements prompts a re-evaluation of the origin and nature of genetic material as the driving force behind evolutionary novelty. While scholars used to think that novel features resulted from random genetic mutations of an individual’s specific genome, today we recognize the important role that acquired viruses and mobile genetic elements have played in introducing evolutionary novelty within the genomes of species. Viral infections and subviral RNAs can enter (...) the host genome and persist as genetic regulatory networks. Persistent viral infections are also important to understand the split between great apes and humans. Nearly all mammals and nonhuman primates rely on olfaction, i.e., chemoreception as the basis of the sense of smell for social recognition, group membership, and the coordination of organized social life. Humans, however, evolved other means to establish social bonding, because several infection waves by endogenous retroviruses caused a loss of odor receptors in human ancestors. The human independence from olfaction for social recognition was in turn one driver of the rather abrupt human transition to dependence on visual information, gesture production, and facial recognition that are at the roots of language-based communication. (shrink)

RESUMO O presente trabalho mostra as atividades realizadas do período de 01 de julho a 01 de novembro na JRM Agropecuária. As atividades foram desenvolvidas na área de bovinocultura de leite, este trabalho foi desenvolvido sob orientação do professor mestre Rodrigo Dorneles Tortorella e supervisão do médico veterinário André Ricardo, em conjunto com o médico veterinário Breno. Durante o período de estágio foi acompanhado as atividades realizadas no setor de manejo, reprodução, bezerreiro e recria da fazenda, além de acompanhar as (...) consultorias quinzenais realizadas pelos médicos veterinários. Este trabalho é composto pela descrição de estágio, referencial bibliográfico e relato de caso. O manejo reprodutivo pode trazer muito impactos econômicos se não for realizado de forma adequado, para trazer melhores resultados biotécnicas da reprodução foram criadas, como por exemplo a inseminação artificial, juntamente com ela, protocolos de inseminação são usados, para isso é necessário conhecer a anatomia do animal e a fisiologia do ciclo estral, trazendo então melhores resultados adequando a necessidade da propriedade. O relato de caso consiste na avaliação da taxa de concepção ao primeiro serviço de vacas leiteiras primíparas e multíparas no pós-parto em anestro, submetidas a uma pré-sincronização anterior a um protocolo de IATF, o qual obteve resultado e a maioria dos animais responderam a pré-sincronização, e as taxas de concepção foram superiores comparadas apenas a utilização de IATF, obtendo 37% de animais gestantes ao primeiro serviço. Palavras-chave: Anestro; Bovinos; Concepção; Pré-Sincronização. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS ALMEIDA, Í.C.; SOBREIRA, R.R.; OLIVEIRA, F.A.; GARCIA, Y.L.; MADUREIRA, A.P.; BARIONI, G.; SIQUEIRA, J.B. Protocolo de pré-sincronização hormonal em vacas mestiças no período pós-parto. Revista Brasileira de Medicina Veterinária, v.38 n.4, p. 353-357, 2016. AYRES, H; FERREIRA, R. M; CUNHA, A. P; ARAÚJO, R. R; WILTBANK, M. C. Double-Ovsynch in high-producing dairy cows: effects on progesterone concentrations and ovulation to GnRH treatments. Theriogenology. v. 79, n. 1, p. 159-164, 2013 AZEVEDO, C; CANADA, N; SIMÕES, J. O protocolo hormonal Ovsynch e suas modificações em vacas leiteiras de alta produção: uma revisão. Arquivos de zootecnia, v.63, n.244, p. 173-187, 2014. BERGAMASCHI, M.A.C.M; MACHADO, R; BARBOSA, R.T. Eficiência reprodutiva das vacas leiteiras. Circular Técnica- Embrapa. São Paulo, 2010. CAMPOS, C.C; RESENDE, E.V; CARNEIRO, L.C; MUNHOZ, A.K; SANTOS, R.M. Condição ovariana de vacas holandesas no início do programa reprodutivo. Vet. Not, v.18, n. 2, p. 145-147, 2012. CARVALHO, B.C; PIRES, M.F.A; ARBEX, W; SANTOS, G.B. Uso de Tecnologias de Precisão na Reprodução de Bovinos Leiteiros. Cadernos Técnicos de Veterinária e Zootecnia. n.79. 2015. CARVALHO, V.S. Avaliação morfológica do aparelho reprodutor de novilhas pertencentes a três grupos raciais. Universidade de Brasília - Faculdade de Agronomia e Medicina Veterinária. Brasília, 2017. CONSENTINI, C. E. C; WILTBANK, M.C; SARTORI, R. Fatores que otimizam a eficiência reprodutiva em rebanhos leiteiros com ênfase em programas de inseminação artificial cronometrada. Animais, 2021. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Anatomia e Fisiologia do Sistema Reprodutivo dos Animais Domésticos. Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva, 2020. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Anestro em Vacas Leiteiras: Fisiologia e Manejo. 2021. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Fisiologia Clínica do Ciclo Estral de Vacas Leiteiras: Desenvolvimento Folicular, Corpo Lúteo e Etapas do Estro. 2020. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Fisiologia da Reprodução Animal: Ovulação, Controle e Sincronização do Cio. 2020. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Fisiologia da Reprodução de Bovinos Leiteiros: Aspectos Básicos e Clínicos. Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva, 2022. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Fisiologia do ciclo estral dos animais domésticos. Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva, 2021. DA SILVA, Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro. Fisiologia do estro e do serviço na reprodução bovina. Belo Jardim: EICS, 2021. FAILS, A.D; MAGEE, C. Frandson- Anatomia e Fisiologia dos Animais de Produção. 8 ed. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara Koogan Ltda, 2019. FERREIRA, A.M. Reprodução da Fêmea Bovina: Fisiologia Aplicada e Problemas mais comuns (causas e tratamentos). Juiz de Fora, MG: Edição do Autor, 2010. FRANCO, V. M. Efeitos da pré-sincronização antes da primeira IATF pós-parto em vacas girolando. Uberlândia, MG, 2021. HERLIHY, M. M; GIORDANO, J. O; SOUZA, A. H; FERREIRA, R. M; KESTIN, A; NASCIMENTO, A. B; GUENTHER, J. N; GASKA, J. M; KACUBA, S. J; CROWE, M. A; MORDOMO, S. T; WILTBANK, M. C; Presynchronization with Double-Ovsynch improves fertility at first postpartum artificial insemination in lactating dairy cows. Journal of Dairy Science, v. 95, n. 12, p. 7003-7014, 2012. JÚNIOR, M.F.D; ZERVOUDAKIS, L.K.H; ZERVOUDAKIS, J.T; KOCHECK, J.F.W; FILHO, R.S.F; FREITAS, L.D. Aspectos relacionados à fisiologia do anestro pós-parto em bovinos. Colloquium Agrariae, v. 9, n.2. Mato Grosso, 2013. MABA, M.M. Revisão Bibliográfica: Bases Fisiológicas e Dados Sobre a Inseminação Artificial em Tempo Fixo (IATF). Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina - Centro de Ciências Rurais. Curitibanos, 2018. MACEDO, G.G; OLIVEIRA, M; ROCHA, C.D; Sincronização da ovulação: como amenizar ainda mais a fisiologia da reprodução para obter melhores resultados?. Revista Brasileira de Reprodução Animal. Belo Horizonte, v.39, n.1, p. 41-46, 2015. OLIVEIRA, A.P., OLIVEIRA FILHO, J.P. e MEIRA, C. Dinâmica folicular ovariana comparativa entre as espécies bovina e equina. PUBVET, Londrina, V. 4, N. 8, Ed. 113, Art. 763, 2010. PANSANI, M.A; BELTRAN, M.P. Anatomia e Fisiologia do Aparelho Reprodutor de Fêmeas Bovinas. Revista Cientifica Eletrônica de Medicina Veterinária. São Paulo, n.12, 2009. PAZ, S. Taxa de prenhez e concepção: o que é e como medir na sua propriedade. Prodap, 2021. Disponível em:. REECE, W.O; ROWE, E.W. Anatomia Funcional e Fisiologia dos Animais Domésticos. 5 ed. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara Koogan Ltda, 2020. ROCHE, J. R; FRIGGENS, N. C; KAY, J. K; FISHER, M. W; STAFFORD, K. J; BERRY, D. P. Invited review: Body condition score and its association with dairy cow productivity, health, and welfare. Journal of Dairy Science, v.92, p.5769-5801, 2009. SANTOS, J. P. C; LEAL, S. D. C. B. S; MADEIRA, E.M; SCHWEGLER, E; PINO, F.A.B.D; BIANCHI, I; CORRÊA, M.N. Balanço Energético Negativo no Período de Periparto em Vacas de Aptidão Leiteira. NUPEEC – Núcleo de Pesquisa, Ensino e Extensão em Pecuária. Pelotas, 2009. SENAR. Inseminação Artificial: Bovinos / Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Rural. 3 ed. Brasília, 2011. SILVA, L. A. C. Pré-sincronização com folículo persistente em protocolos de sincronização da ovulação a base de GnRH em vacas de leite em lactação. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Curso de Ciências Veterinárias, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Lavras, 2017. Disponível em:. Acesso em: 24 de outubro de 2022. SOARES, P.H.A. Métodos de sincronização de estro e ovulação em bovinos: revisão de literatura. Conexão Ci, v.14 n.2, p. 66-72, 2019. SOUZA, V.L. Avaliação da fertilidade do rebanho bovino de Rondônia e o uso de detecção de cio e do GnRH para aumentar a eficiência de programas de IATF. Fundação Universidade Federal de Rondônia. Porto Velho, 2019. Veja informações úteis sobre a taxa de prenhez. Ideagri, 2022. Disponível em:. (shrink)

The chapter provides an overview on what it means to be in a world that is uncertain, e.g., how under conditions of limited understanding any activity is an activity that designs and constructs, and how designing objects, spaces, and situations relates to the (designed) meta-world of second-order cybernetics. Designers require a framework that is open, but one that supplies ethical guidance when ‘constructing’ something new. Relating second-order design thinking to insights in philosophy and aesthetics, the chapter argues that second-order cybernetics (...) provides a response to this ethical challenge and essentially it entails a poetics of designing. //// 'A Poetics of Designing' is part of the first book-length collection of texts in Design Cybernetics. It introduces the subject from the point of view of aesthetics. Importantly, the chapter argues that second-order cybernetics circumvents the necessity for a muse inspired artist or genius as a mediator between higher spirits and life, in favour of artists and designers who have true agency. //// Cybernetics is often associated with AI, which is, however, only one of the branches that developed on the basis of the interdisciplinary research begun in the 1940s and entitled cybernetics. I hope the chapter contributes to a better understanding of the second-order cybernetics that has been conceived in close relationship with art and design from the late 60s onwards. (shrink)

: Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's account of natality, Guenther argues that Martin Heidegger overlooks the distinct ontological and ethical significance of birth as a limit that orients one toward an other who resists appropriation, even while handing down a heritage of possibilities that one can—and must—make one's own. Guenther calls this structure of natality Being-from-others, modifying Heidegger's language of inheritance to suggest an ethical understanding of existence as the gift of the other.

Shame is notoriously ambivalent. On one hand, it operates as a mechanism of normalization and social exclusion, installing or reinforcing patterns of silence and invisibility; on the other hand, the capacity for shame may be indispensible for ethical life insofar as it attests to the subject’s constitutive relationality and its openness to the provocation of others. Sartre, Levinas and Beauvoir each offer phenomenological analyses of shame in which its basic structure emerges as a feeling of being exposed to others and (...) bound to one’s own identity. For Sartre, shame is an ontological provocation, constitutive of subjectivity as a being-for-Others. For Levinas, ontological shame takes the form of an inability to escape one’s own relation to being; this predicament is altered by the ethical provocation of an Other who puts my freedom in question and commands me to justify myself. For Beauvoir, shame is an effect of oppression, both for the woman whose embodied existence is marked as shameful, and for the beneficiary of colonial domination who feels ashamed of her privilege. For each thinker, shame articulates the temporality of social life in both its promise and its danger. (shrink)

In searching for life in extraterrestrial space, it is essential to act based on an unequivocal definition of life. In the twentieth century, life was defined as cells that self-replicate, metabolize, and are open for mutations, without which genetic information would remain unchangeable, and evolution would be impossible. Current definitions of life derive from statistical mechanics, physics, and chemistry of the twentieth century in which life is considered to function machine like, ignoring a central role of communication. Recent observations show (...) that context-dependent meaningful communication and network formation (and control) are central to all life forms. Evolutionary relevant new nucleotide sequences now appear to have originated from social agents such as viruses, their parasitic relatives, and related RNA networks, not from errors. By applying the known features of natural languages and communication, a new twenty-first century definition of life can be reached in which communicative interactions are central to all processes of life. A new definition of life must integrate the current empirical knowledge about interactions between cells, viruses, and RNA networks to provide a better explanatory power than the twentieth century narrative. (shrink)

In Remnants of Auschwitz , Giorgio Agamben argues that the hidden structure of subjectivity is shame. In shame, I am consigned to something that cannot be assumed, such that the very thing that makes me a subject also forces me to witness my own desubjectification. Agamben’s ontological account of shame is problematic insofar as it forecloses collective responsibility and collapses the distinction between shame and humiliation. By recontextualizing three of Agamben’s sources – Primo Levi, Robert Antelme and Maurice Blanchot – (...) I develop an alternative account of shame as the structure of intersubjectivity , and of a collective responsibility that is more fundamental than the subject itself. On this basis, I sketch the preliminary outline of a biopolitics of resistance rooted in the ethics of alterity. The intuition driving this approach is that life is never bare ; even in situations of extreme affliction there remains a relation to alterity which provides a starting point for resistance. (shrink)

Abstract The quasispecies theory is a helpful concept in the explanation of RNA virus evolution and behaviour, with a relevant impact on methods used to fight viral diseases. It has undergone some adaptations to integrate new empirical data, especially the non-deterministic nature of mutagenesis, and the variety of behavioural motifs in cooperation, competition, communication, innovation, integration, and exaptation. Also, the consortial structure of quasispecies with complementary roles of memory genomes of minority populations better fits the empirical data than did the (...) original concept of a master sequence and its mutant spectra. The high productivity of quasispecies variants generates unique sequences that never existed before and will never exist again. In the present essay, we underline that such sequences represent really new ontological entities, not just error copies of previous ones. Their primary unique property, the incredible variant production, is suggested here as quasispecies productivity, which replaces the error-replication narrative to better fit into a new relationship between mankind and living nature in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian has proposed the term “SHU syndrome” to name the cluster of cognitive, perceptual and affective symptoms that commonly arise for inmates held in the Special Housing Units (SHU) of supermax prisons. In this paper, I analyze the harm of solitary confinement from a phenomenological perspective by drawing on Husserl’s account of the essential relation between consciousness, the experience of an alter ego and the sense of a real, Objective world. While Husserl’s prioritization of transcendental subjectivity over transcendental (...) intersubjectivity underestimates the degree to which first-person consciousness is constitutively intertwined with the embodied consciousness of others, Husserl’s phenomenology nevertheless provides a fruitful starting-point for a philosophical engagement with the psychiatric research on solitary confinement. (shrink)

In Otherwise than Being, Levinas writes that the alterity of the Other escapes “le flair animal,” or the animal’s sense of smell. This paper puts pressure on the strong human-animal distinction that Levinas makes by considering the possibility that, while non-human animals may not respond to the alterity of the Other in the way that Levinas describes as responsibility, animal sensibility plays a key role in a relation to Others that Levinas does not discuss at length: friendship. This approach to (...) friendship addresses a gap in Levinas’ work between the absolute Other for whom I am responsible and the “brother” who is my political equal. (shrink)

Conventional methods of genetic engineering and more recent genome editing techniques focus on identifying genetic target sequences for manipulation. This is a result of historical concept of the gene which was also the main assumption of the ENCODE project designed to identify all functional elements in the human genome sequence. However, the theoretical core concept changed dramatically. The old concept of genetic sequences which can be assembled and manipulated like molecular bricks has problems in explaining the natural genome-editing competences of (...) viruses and RNA consortia that are able to insert or delete, combine and recombine genetic sequences more precisely than random-like into cellular host organisms according to adaptational needs or even generate sequences de novo. Increasing knowledge about natural genome editing questions the traditional narrative of mutations (error replications) as essential for generating genetic diversity and genetic content arrangements in biological systems. This may have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of artificial genome editing. (shrink)

Manfred Eigen employs the terms language and communication to explain key recombination processes of DNA as well as to explain the self-organization of human language and communication: Life processes as well as language and communication processes are governed by the logic of a molecular syntax, which is the exact depiction of a principally formalizable reality. The author of the present contribution demonstrates that this view of Manfred Eigen’s cannot be sufficiently substantiated and that it must be supplemented by an approach (...) based on linguistic pragmatics. (shrink)

Prisoners involved in the Attica rebellion and in the recent Georgia prison strike have protested their dehumanizing treatment as animals and as slaves. Their critique is crucial for tracing the connections between slavery, abolition, the racialization of crime, and the reinscription of racialized slavery within the US prison system. I argue that, in addition to the dehumanization of prisoners, inmates are further de-animalized when they are held in conditions of intensive confinement such as prolonged solitude or chronic overcrowding. To be (...) de-animalized is to be treated not as a living being who is sustained by its mutual relations with other living and nonliving beings, but rather as a thing to be warehoused and/or exchanged for a profit. The violence of de-animalization affects both human and nonhuman animals held in control prisons, factory farms, laboratories and other sites of intensive confinement. In order to make the connections between these sites, and to develop forms of solidarity appropriate to our shared animality, we need a post-humanist critique of intensive confinement that breaks with the logic of opposition between human and animal, and articulates our constitutive relationality as (inter)corporeal beings. (shrink)

Irigaray's early work seeks to multiply possibilities for women's self-expression by recovering a sexual difference in which male and female are neither the same nor opposites, but irreducibly different modes of embodiment. In her more recent work, however, Irigaray has emphasized the duality of the sexes at the expense of multiplicity, enshrining the heterosexual couple as the model of sexual ethics. Alison Stone's recent revision of Irigaray supplements her account of sexual duality with a theory of bodily multiplicity derived from (...) Butler, Nietzsche, and certain German Romantics; but to the extent that Stone maintains the primacy of sexual duality, her revision fails to address the claims of multiplicity on their own terms. In this paper, I interpret a passage from Marcel Proust's novel, Sodom and Gomorrah, in order to develop an alternative theory of sexual difference in which sexual duality is affirmed in relation to a third, unsexed but sexual force which multiplies the possibilities for sexual pleasure beyond heterosexual coupling. Proust's emphasis on sexed ``parts'' rather than sexed morphologies is generative of maximally diverse combinations, all of which are equally natural and equally enhanced through artifice. (shrink)

Darwinian evolutionary theory has two key terms, variations and biological selection, which finally lead to survival of the fittest variant. With the rise of molecular genetics, variations were explained as results of error replications out of the genetic master templates. For more than half a century, it has been accepted that new genetic information is mostly derived from random error-based events. But the error replication narrative has problems explaining the sudden emergence of new species, new phenotypic traits, and genome innovations (...) as a sudden single event. Meanwhile, it is recognized that errors cannot explain the evolution of genetic information, genetic novelty, and complexity. Now, empirical evidence establishes the crucial role of non-random genetic content editors, such as viruses, diversity generating retroelements, and other RNA networks, to produce new genetic information, complex regulatory control, inheritance vectors, genetic identity, immunity, new sequence space, evolution of complex organisms, and evolutionary transitions. (shrink)

In a recent forum article, Dan Needleman and Jan Brugues argue that, despite the astonishing advances in cell biology, a fundamental understanding of even the most well-studied subcellular biological processes is lacking. This lack of understanding is evidenced by our inability to make precise predictions of subcellular and cellular behaviors. They suggest that to achieve such an under- standing, we need to apply a combination of quantitative experiments with new theoretical concepts and determine the physical principles of subcellular biological organization. (...) We discuss these issues and suggest that, besides biophysics, we need strong theoretical inputs from biocommunication theory in order to understand all the core agents of the cellular life and subcellular organization. (shrink)

Marion has criticized Levinas for failing to account for the individuation of the Other, thus leaving the face of the Other abstract, neutral and anonymous. I defend Levinas against this critique by distinguishing between the individuation of the subject through hypostasis and the singularization of self and Other through ethical response. An analysis of the instant in Levinas’s early and late work shows that it is possible to speak of a “nameless singularity” which does not collapse into neutrality or abstraction, (...) but rather explains the sense in which anyone is responsible for any Other who happens to come along. (shrink)

In recent years, comparisons between abortion and slavery have become increasingly common in American pro-life politics. Some have compared the struggle to extinguish abortion rights to the struggle to end slavery. Others have claimed that Roe v Wade is the Dred Scott of our time. Still others have argued that abortion is worse than slavery; it is a form of genocide. This paper tracks the abortion = slavery meme from Ronald Reagan to the current personhood movement, drawing on work by (...) Orlando Patterson, Hortense Spillers, and Saidiya Hartman to develop a discourse of reproductive justice that grapples with the wounded kinship of slavery and racism. (shrink)

Most molecular biological concepts derive from physical chemical assumptions about the genetic code that are basically more than 40 years old. Additionally, systems biology, another quantitative approach, investigates the sum of interrelations to obtain a more holistic picture of nucleotide sequence order. Recent empirical data on genetic code compositions and rearrangements by mobile genetic elements and non-coding RNAs, together with results of virus research and their role in evolution, does not really fit into these concepts and compel a re-examination. In (...) this review we try to find an alternate hypothesis. It seems plausible now that if we look at the abundance of regulatory RNAs and persistent viruses in host genomes, we will find more and more evidence that the key players that edit the genetic codes of host genomes are consortia of RNA agents and viruses that drive evolutionary novelty and regulation of cellular processes in all steps of development. This agent-based approach may lead to a qualitative RNA sociology that investigates and identifies relevant behavioural motifs of cooperative RNA consortia. In addition to molecular biological perspectives this may lead to a better understanding of genetic code evolution and dynamics. (shrink)

Denis Nobel looks at four important misinterpretations of molecular biology concerning evolutionary processes and demonstrates that the new synthesis today looks rather outdated. The modern synthesis is nearly 80 years old. The proponents who worked out the modern synthesis had no access to the current knowledge on cell biology, genetics, epigenetics, RNA biology and virology. Therefore this contribution adds several aspects which Nobel’s article does not explicitly mention, providing some examples for a better understanding of evolutionary novelty.

IntroductionBy ‘philosophy of consciousness’ we mean an assembly of different approaches such as philosophy of mind , perception, rational conclusions, information processing and contradictory conceptions such as holistic ‘all is mind’ perspectives and their atomistic counterparts.Since ancient Greeks philosophy has provided widespread debates on pneuma, nous, psyche, spiritus, mind, and Geist. In more recent times the philosophy of consciousness has become part of psychology, sociology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, communication science, information theory, cybernetic systems theory, synthetic biology, biolinguistics, bioinformatics and (...) biosemiotics.However, no matter what each of these approaches presents as a coherent explanation of the human mind, thinking, and consciousness, they remain alien to our self-awareness and self-reflection-based understanding because they do not offer a rational and at the same time .. (shrink)

Although molecular biology, genetics, and related special disciplines represent a large amount of empirical data, a practical method for the evaluation and overview of current knowledge is far from being realized. The main concepts and narratives in these fields have remained nearly the same for decades and the more recent empirical data concerning the role of noncoding RNAs and persistent viruses and their defectives do not fit into this scenario. A more innovative approach such as applied biocommunication theory could translate (...) empirical data into a coherent perspective on the functions within and between biological organisms and arguably lead to a sustainable integrative biology. (shrink)

The metamorphosis from larvae to adult butterflies has represented the “mystery” of life since the ancient Greeks. How could we explain the various steps of development from caterpillars to the most beautiful butterflies? A mystery preva lent in the twentieth century concerned the storage of the complete genetic informa tion of an organism in the DNA of its every cell. How and why do so many different cell types develop throughout the lives of organisms at the right time and place? (...) With the rise of epigenetics, the “fog” of mystery is starting to clear. We now know that the genetic storage medium in every living cell acquires an incredible plasticity through certain markings on the genetic text, linking the inheritable information with the contextuality of the real lifeworld of each organism. This means that the concrete living organism influences during development the various stages of gene expression, transcription, translation, immunity, and DNA repair actively and leads to various phenotypic outcomes without altering the DNA storage medium. More surprisingly, such variations of developmental phenotypes were found capable of successfully adapting to changing environmental circumstances. Better adapted organisms may lead to reprogramming in the epigenetic states which may reach an inheritable status for many generations or even become a fixed part of the genetic identity of the species. This is how evolution learns. (shrink)

Our understanding of the key players in evolution and of the development of all organisms in all domains of life has been aided by current knowledge about RNA stem-loop groups, their proposed interaction motifs in an early RNA world and their regulative roles in all steps and substeps of nearly all cellular processes, such as replication, transcription, translation, repair, immunity and epigenetic marking. Cooperative evolution was enabled by promiscuous interactions between single-stranded regions in the loops of naturally forming stem-loop structures (...) in RNAs. It was also shown that cooperative RNA stem-loops outcompete selfish ones and provide foundational self-constructive groups (ribosome, editosome, spliceosome, etc.). Self-empowerment from abiotic matter to biological behavior does not just occur at the beginning of biological evolution; it is also essential for all levels of socially interacting RNAs, cells and viruses. (shrink)

Recent investigations surprisingly indicate that single RNA "stem-loops" operate solely by chemical laws that act without selective forces, and in contrast, self-ligated consortia of RNA stem-loops operate by biological selection. To understand consortial RNA selection, the concept of single quasi-species and its mutant spectra as drivers of RNA variation and evolution is rethought here. Instead, we evaluate the current RNA world scenario in which consortia of cooperating RNA stem-loops are the basic players. We thus redefine quasispecies as RNA quasispecies consortia (...) and argue that it has essential behavioral motifs that are relevant to the inherent variation, evolution and diversity in biology. We propose that qs-c is an especially innovative force. We apply qs-c thinking to RNA stem-loops and evaluate how it yields altered bulges and loops in the stem-loop regions, not as errors, but as a natural capability to generate diversity. This basic competence-not error-opens a variety of combinatorial possibilities which may alter and create new biological interactions, identities and newly emerged self identity functions. Thus RNA stem-loops typically operate as cooperative modules, like members of social groups. From such qs-c of stem-loop groups we can trace a variety of RNA secondary structures such as ribozymes, viroids, viruses, mobile genetic elements as abundant infection derived agents that provide the stem-loop societies of small and long non-coding RNAs. (shrink)

The concepts of the origin of the genetic code and the definitions of life changed dramatically after the RNA world hypothesis. Main narratives in molecular biology and genetics such as the “central dogma,” “one gene one protein” and “non-coding DNA is junk” were falsified meanwhile. RNA moved from the transition intermediate molecule into centre stage. Additionally the abundance of empirical data concerning nonrandom genetic change operators such as the variety of mobile genetic elements, persistent viruses and defectives do not fit (...) with the dominant narrative of error replication events (mutations) as being the main driving forces creating genetic novelty and diversity. The reductionistic and mechanistic views on physico-chemical properties of the genetic code are no longer convincing as appropriate descriptions of the abundance of non-random genetic content operators which are active in natural genetic engineering and natural genome editing. (shrink)

The present research examines psychological momentum (PM), a perceived force that lay intuition suggests influences performance. PM theory is proposed to account for how momentum perceptions arise, and four studies demonstrate the influence of lay intuitions about PM on expectations regarding performance outcomes. Study 1 establishes that individuals share intuitions about the types of events that precipitate PM, and Study 2 finds that defeating a rival increases momentum perception. Study 3 provides evidence for the lay belief that as more PM (...) accumulates during a prior task, there should be more residual momentum left to carry over to a subsequent task, and Study 4 finds that an individual whose PM is interrupted is expected to have greater difficulty completing a task than is an individual whose steady progress is interrupted. Discussion focuses on linkages between PM and related constructs. (shrink)

Viruses and related infectious genetic parasites are the most abundant biological agents on this planet. They invade all cellular organisms, are key agents in the generation of adaptive and innate immune systems, and drive nearly all regulatory processes within living cells.

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this (...) question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country and a diverse set of interdependent countries. Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good. (shrink)

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension (...) of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a ‘data mirror’ that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided. (shrink)

All disciplines must define their basic units and core processes. In evolutionary biology, the core process is natural selection and the basic unit of selection and adaptation is the individual. To operationalize the theory of natural selection we must count individuals, as they are the bearers of fitness. While canonical individuals have often been taken to be multicellular organisms, the hierarchy of life shows that new kinds of individuals have evolved. A variety of criteria have been used to define biological (...) individuality. Some criteria rely on the presence/absence of a particular property while others advocate an approach that reflects the process of natural selection. The plethora of approaches to classifying individuality has resulted in confusion regarding how to study individuality in a given taxon. (shrink)

This essay joins Wilhelm Dilthey’s conception of the metaphysical impulse as a flight from the tragedy of human finitude with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of how language bewitches intelligence. We contend that there are features of the phenomenology of language that play a constitutive and pervasive role in the formation of metaphysical illusion.

The aim of this chapter is to shed new light on the question of what newly sighted subjects are capable of seeing on the basis of previous experience with mind- independent, external objects and their properties through touch alone. This question is also known as "Molyneux’s question." Much of the empirically driven debate surrounding this question has been centered on the nature of the representational content of the subjects' visual experiences. It has generally been assumed that the meaning of "seeing" (...) deployed in these disputes is more or less clear and unproblematic, and therefore requires no analysis or clarification. In this chapter, we wish to challenge this assumption. We argue that getting clear on the meaning of "seeing" is the only feasible way to determine whether the empirical attempts to answer Molyneux’s question accurately capture what newly sighted subjects are in fact capable of seeing. Specifically, we show that the dominant interpretations of the empirical results from a recent study (Held et al., 2011) fail to take into account that seeing can be not only purely visual but also epistemic in that it requires background knowledge (such as what an object with a particular viewpoint-independent shape looks like from a particular perspective). (shrink)