Related papers: Darwinian Evolution of Taste
Since the time of Darwin, scientists have struggled to reconcile the evolution of biological forms in a universe determined by fixed laws. These laws underpin the origin of life, evolution, human culture and technology, as set by the…
The art of viticulture and the quest for making wines has a long tradition and it just started recently that mathematicians entered this field with their main contribution of modelling alcoholic fermentation. These models consist of systems…
Molecular biology features numerous complexes of proteins that coordinate in an interlocking fashion to fulfill different functions. Adaptive evolution explains some of this complexity, but needn't be the default when neutral explanations…
The growth and scaling of organs is a fundamental aspect of animal development. However, how organs grow to the right size and shape required by physiological demands, remains largely unknown. Here, we provide a framework combining theory…
A conflict exists between field biologists and physiologists ("functional biologists" or "evolutionary ecologists") on the one hand and those working in molecular evolution ("evolutionary biologists" or "population geneticists") on the…
Food is an essential part of civilization, with a scope that ranges from the biological to the economic and cultural levels. Here we study the statistics of ingredients and recipes taken from Brazilian, British, French, and Medieval…
Protein folding and evolution are intimately linked phenomena. Here, we revisit the concept of exons as potential protein folding modules across 38 abundant and conserved protein families. Taking advantage of genomic exon-intron…
In the present article the recent works to formulate laws in Darwinian evolutionary dynamics are discussed. Although there is a strong consensus that general laws in biology may exist, opinions opposing such suggestion are abundant. Based…
It is well known amongst molecular biologists that proteins with a common ancestor and that perform the same function in similar organisms, can have rather different amino-acid sequences. Mutations have altered the amino-acid sequences…
The seasonal human influenza virus undergoes rapid evolution, leading to significant changes in circulating viral strains from year to year. These changes are typically driven by adaptive mutations, particularly in the antigenic epitopes,…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
Modern biomedicine is challenged to predict the effects of genetic variation. Systematic functional assays of point mutants of proteins have provided valuable empirical information, but vast regions of sequence space remain unexplored.…
Global food systems must deliver nutritious, sustainable foods while sharply reducing environmental impact. Yet, food innovation remains slow, empirical, and fragmented. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a transformative path to link…
Background: Speciation corresponds to the progressive establishment of reproductive barriers between groups of individuals derived from an ancestral stock. Since Darwin did not believe that reproductive barriers could be selected for, he…
The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network provides an overview of the complex biological reactions vital to an organism's metabolism and survival. Even though in the past PPI network were compared across organisms in detail, there has…
The Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein-protein interaction map, as well as many natural and man-made networks, shares the scale-free topology. The preferential attachment model was suggested as a generic network evolution model that yields…
Current-day genomes bear the mark of the evolutionary processes. One of the strongest indications is the sequence homology among families of proteins that perform similar biological functions in different species. The number of proteins in…
The molecular biology revolution of the last seventy five years has transformed our view of living systems. Scientific explanations of biological phenomena are now synonymous with the identification of the genes, proteins, and signaling…
Humans routinely infer taste, smell, texture, and even sound from food images a phenomenon well studied in cognitive science. However, prior vision language research on food has focused primarily on recognition tasks such as meal…
In this work, we introduce a computational model for the study of the host-bacteria interaction and the influence of the intestinal microbiota on the behavior and feeding pattern of an individual. The model is based on digital entities,…