As you read this story, you will learn the following:
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It may be fewer than many other sciences, but biology does have two dozen or so “rules”—broad generalizations about behavior or nature and evolution.
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Now, USC researchers want to add a new rule called “Selectively Favored Instability (SAI),” which explores how instability can actually benefit cells and cellular organisms.
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The flip side of this “rule” is that SAI may also be a key factor in problems such as disease and aging, so understanding this process may help explore these biological processes.
Across science, rules and laws help us understand the world around us, whether they apply to cosmic or subatomic scales. In the biological world, however, things are a little more complicated. This is because nature often full The exception is biology, and therefore the “rules of biology” are also considered to be broad generalizations rather than absolute facts that explain and govern all known life.
Some of these broad generalizations include, among others, Allen’s law, which states that endotherms (warm-blooded animals) adapt their body shapes to climatic conditions—short, stocky bodies help retain heat in cold climates, while tall, lanky bodies help dissipate heat in warm climates. Another “law” known as Bergmann’s rule states that species in widespread clades tend to be larger in cold climates and smaller in warm climates (of course, like most biological rules, Exceptions apply).
Some About two dozen rules currently exist describes various processes in the natural world, and now researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) want to add a new rule. At first glance, the new rule, known as “selectively favored instability” (SAI), appears to go against fundamental assumptions about life in general, and overturns current assumptions that life craves stability and resource conservation.
While nature does tend toward stability (which is one reason we see so many hexagonal shapes in the wild, including honeycombs and insect eyes), University of Southern California molecular biologist John Talles believes that instability in biological components like proteins and genes may actually be due to helpful to cells. The study was published last week in the journal aging frontier.
“Even the simplest cells contain proteases and nucleases and regularly degrade and replace their proteins and RNA, suggesting that SAI is essential for life,” Tower said in a press statement. “If normal genes favor one cell state and genetic mutations favor another, this favors the maintenance of normal genes and genetic mutations in the same cell population.”
These states allow for greater genetic diversity, which in turn can make organisms more adaptable. Many cellular components are also favor Short lifespan as this actually helps promote cellular health. This suggests that SAI in these components serves a necessary biological function.
Of course, instability also has many disadvantages. This energy-requiring mutation-destabilizing process may introduce harmful cells that contribute to senescence, while also inducing other types of damage and dysfunction.
“Senescence has proven difficult to define, but most definitions include an increase in the chance of death with age, as well as a decrease in reproductive fitness with age,” the paper reads. “SAI may impose a cost on the replicator in terms of energy and/or materials, and this cost may be interpreted as promoting senescence.”
Another piece of evidence supporting SAI’s ubiquity and its candidacy as a new “rule of biology” is its appearance in other well-known concepts, including chaos theory and the idea of ”cellular consciousness.” Because of this, and its connection to fundamental biological processes like aging, understanding the inner workings of SAI can help biologists explore cellular life in entirely new ways.
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