laodan's favorite microbiology web sites

Last login: 13 hours agoLaodan: laodan is a 56 year old guy from Wisconsin, USA.; Likes 1,586 pages, 24 videos, 8 photos • 227 fans • Received 64 reviews; Member since Aug 08, 2005

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Frozen Bacteria Repair Own DNA for Millennia: Nov 30, 2007 12:15am 3 reviews complex-systems, genetics, microbiology, life, complexity
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070827-frozen-dna.html; Frozen Bacteria Repair Own DNA for Millennia in National Geographic by Mason Inman
Bacteria can survive in deep freeze for hundreds of thousands of years by staying just alive enough to keep their DNA in good repair, a new study says. Frozen Bacteria Repair Own DNA for Millennia Speaking about resilience... The principle of life seems to be hard wired for resisting extreme conditions. Advanced forms of life such as the human specie, for example, do not benefit from the same kind of resilience. It seems to me that the more advanced the level of development of a specie (the more diverse its components and the more complex their interactions) the less resilient that specie becomes. If this is correct it would mean that complexity engenders higher levels of fragility. Each new component engenders a flow of interactions with the other components. And a single interaction among that flow has the potential to destabilize the whole flux of interactions... There is a deep lesson of philosophy hidden in this mechanism of complexification - fragilization. I bet that the study of that mechanism shall gradually impose itself on a humanity discovering that it is at risk...