I was too young (alas) to attend the legendary 1961-1962 series of lectures given by Richard Feynman at CalTech. But someone who later became a good friend of mine did. And here is how Feynman- who was unrivalled to communicate science to enrapt students and colleagues - answered the same question with respect to physics: "All things are made of atomic particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart but repelling upon being squeezed into one another".
That was a powerful, factual, information-packed statement.
Now, in a few words, what 'definitive', information-rich statement about BIOLOGY could we pass on to future generations?
Nota: this question is not asking what you consider to be the single most important biological discovery. Ok?
All forms of life share common ancestry and arose through selective inheritance of random variations in the trait-determining molecule, DNA.
Starting from this sentence, I have often dreamt of a book either paper or e-book. The subject would be: "what is our common knowledge ? " means "everybody knows this".
Various and disordered examples ?
1- all matter on earth is made out of atoms (1906: Ostwald gave up with opposition)
2- neurons are a key component of brain (a century ?)
3- living cells exist and are a key level of matter organization in life ( how old?)
4- information of life is stored in DNA (less than a century)
5- speed of light is finite (century)
6- light is made of photons (century)
7- electrical current is made of moving electrons (century also?)
8- there are four fundamental interactions (to what extent is this known ?)
9- atoms are not all stable (radioactivity)
10- nucleus include protons and neutrons
11- water molecule is H2O
12- sun is a nuclear reactor
13- earth is rotating around the earth
14- sun is part of the milky way, our galaxy
15- earth is a sphere
16- heat is microscopic consequence of molecular random movements.
17- there exist plus and minus electrical charges
18- fire is chemical reaction (cooking, breathing,...)
19- sound is air vibration
20- please add or correct
21- ...
I do not mean fancy or questionable points but bare and very important facts needed to understand the world around us. This was the spirit of Feynman quote: what is really important, what should I really know, what should we share as key knowledge.
For some listed above, that this is known by everybody might not be obvious.
Even more questionable:
- I cannot go through a wall: Pauli principle at work. Again this has been put on the table by Feynman. This is of incredible importance to understand the world around us but very rarely emphasized.
- gamma rays, X ray, UV, visible light, IR,.. are all the same.
- photosynthesis is light absorption to produce chemical energy (CCD do the same...)
- light is EM wave
But altogether, if this list was established even approximately ( using a quiz) the good new would certainly be that we share a lot of scientific knowledge that is the substrate at the bottom of our representation of the world.
In my mind, the most important biological knowledge that must be bequeathed would be "Continuum of living beings, whether plants or animals in totality depends on virtuous preservation and propagation of the preexisting life, otherwise would result in the permanent extinction of life."
This biological information is the most powerful knowledge that needs to be passed on to anyone who lives beyond the aftermath of a cataclysm because, it would benefit restoration or prevention of further life destruction. It will not be easy to live a life on this earth without having the luxury of harmonious interdependency between diverse living organisms. Although we care less about it now, imagine if the only survivors begin to prey upon whatever that is alive or available without caring to propagate, would eventually become extinct themselves.
To Joel Chevrier, answer to question mark 2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Ramón_y_Cajal
Everything dies so make the most of the the time you have, stay curious about the world around you, and mate as frequently as possible.
DNA-RNA are genetic metrial, which passes from parent to progeny heriditary material, all life is made up of cell.
"…We failed! You must use your brain more appropriately, if applicable…"
"cells are the fundamental unit of life and cells arise from preexisting cells".
"If you're looking for the hereditary molecules: they're not the proteins"
Mario Fragata, Université du Québec
Whatever place you live in the Cosmos, stop polluting your planet.
"All life is made up of cells which carry all the information needed to make each individual organism in code-carrying molecules we called DNA (or its simpler version, RNA for more primitive organisms) which are responsible for making proteins which act as chemical catalysts, speeding up the chemical reactions that make MRSGREN possible."
Atoms organized in molecular chains may build larger structures like celular membranes and others carrying vital information to replicate into life form.
Good start.
Please try to keep your input to one sentence only, and if possible within 30 words. You can suggest a powerful story with such constraints; Feynman did just that.
All what makes an organism alive and unique is encoded in it's DNA, of which each parental organism donates halve to his or her spouse.
All living beings on Earth have complex biomolecules called 'DNA' or 'RNA' as the genetic material, systematically placed inside a fundamental unit called 'cell', that perform major cellular activities via 'proteins', giving rise to LIFE.
"A central idea in contemporary biology is that of information." For a living cell is not merely matter. It is matter replete with information.
A living cell is an information processing machine-its a molecular structure with an information processing capacity.
DNA is genetic law. The law of biology is written in the language of DNA. Life is the instantiation of the totality of genomic expression! Praise the God of DNA!
Biology and physics are not able to recreate life from single particles.
Design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on Earth from bacteria to mammals.
Be healthy...the continual existance of your species (your kind) depends on qulaity of the genetic material you pass on to your off-spring and they to their's and so on....
It will be greatly appreciated if the person who down voted my earlier answer can explain to me what is wrong with my answer:
"A central idea in contemporary biology is that of information." For a living cell is not merely matter. It is matter replete with information.
For fun, how about this?
Biology is the (study of) natural processes which combine multitudes of variable pristine, inanimate molecules into complex hierarchical structures, which, through structure-structure interactions, impart higher-order organization of complex animate entities…autonomous "living organisms" which gain and retain the potential to self-replicate and to self-modify, thereby adapting to the rigors of the environment around them, and to interact in autonomous fashion with each other.
"What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, nor a "spark of life". It is information, words, instructions...Think of a billion discrete digital characters...If you want to understand life think about digital technology."
For me, it would be the cell theory: "All living organisms are composed of one or more cells, the cell is the basic unit of structure, function, and organization in all organisms, and all cells come from preexisting cells". Or maybe the central dogma of molecular biology if we are thinking at the molecular level.
A living organism is a complicated work of art that will always remain mystery and we can only discover one piece of it at a time to try to understand how it functions as a whole.
What a great exercise! Every scientist should have a go at this every once in a while. Here is my attempt;
"As humans we have 25,000 genes but our gut microbiome contributes over 1 million, therefore our metabolism, energy and zest for life is a gift from the microbial world."
"The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information."
There is a molecule, Deoxy-ribonucleic acid, that replicates itself and, is a blueprint for most of the activities that occurs in structural and functional unit of life, called CELL.
All life is cell based, largely confined by the central dogma of “DNA makes RNA makes protein”, and exhibiting a seemingly impossible complexity of genetic networks that result in cellular function.
All forms of life share common ancestry and arose through selective inheritance of random variations in the trait-determining molecule, DNA.
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
Hi Frederic, that was full of intrigue, and the answers had some humour too. Thanks. I am not a scientist, am a researcher in legal studies.
but from my understanding of human society, I would say good old Darwin was correct in assessing human behaviour, and I would tell my child to follow human instinct. That's where the best of science has come from, so trusting experience is good thing to do.
"Around all things a spirit waits,
A weave so soft, mere thoughts impress
Their weightless meaning on its plaits.
Actions, with all their force and stress,
Perturb this substance all the more."
Lines from THE WATER MAGE'S DAUGHTER epic that speak to what might be called The Law of Conservation of Information. In other words, what if at its root the cosmos is pure information in various states, from consciousness all the way down to matter? Nowadays, physicists posit multi-verses (pardon the pun) and dark energy that presses even local galaxies apart at increasing speed. It strikes me that the old, discredited notion of the "ether" is making a comeback under a number of slightly different names, that is, if the math doesn't lie. Perhaps this is somehow linked to Teilhard's "noosphere" and idiot savants' abilities to instantaneously compute, as Douglas Hofstadter described in GODEL, ESCHER, BACH some years ago, recounting the mathematical exploits of Ramanujan.
If this eventually turns out to be the case, then biological knowledge, even if destroyed locally, may well reside elsewhere in a state of preservation.
Life at its root requires information, which is stored in DNA and protien molecules.
Living organisms are entities that can make copies of themselves, those that share traits are descendents from the same ancestor and their differences are due to preserved accidents during the copy proccess.
That for each species there is an evolving generative mechanism, or developmental program, responsible for the 'production' of each member of the species.
To solve diseases (find disease-associated genomic variants in the causative genes), all you need to know is the odds ratio: ad/bc.
Only a universe with the specific properties ours has--including the values of certain fundamental constants and initial conditions--could allow our existence. Consider the the ratio of the mass of the proton to the electron, observed in the lab to be about 2,000. Were this ratio changed by any significant degree, the stability of many common chemicals would be compromised. In the end, this would prevent the formation of such molecules as DNA, the building blocks of life.
Life's units are self replicating interactive microscopic cells, their inheritable, modifiable DNA universally encodes for all proteic structures and functions; the best adapted to environment individual reproduces most; all is interrelated.
The most principal knowledge that relates to the living matter is as follows: «Living matter had originated and had developed as a result of chemical interaction between hydrocarbons, niters, and phosphates within the hydrate matrix similar to the methane-hydrate structure II, and there is no other way in Nature for living matter origination.»
ON EARTH, DNA (ATGC) is LIFE-the rest (RNA, Protein,miRNAs, CRISPR, oligos, cells, nuclei, cytoplasm, tissues,..an endless list of painful mankind discoveries may be mere and misplaced details...) but you human that you know read this, you have the obligation, gift, and opportunity to research....and rediscover...Good luck to your journey....
"The entire biological evolutionary process depends upon the unusual chemistry of carbon, which allows it to bond to itself, as well as other elements, creating highly complex molecules that are stable over prevailing terrestrial temperatures, and are capable of conveying genetic information especially DNA, the building blocks of life. Whereas it might be argued that nature creates its own fine-tuning, this can only be done if the primordial constituents of the universe are such that an evolutionary process can be initiated. The unique chemistry of carbon is the ultimate foundation of the capacity of nature to tune itself."
DNA is the primary molecule responsible for all evolution of life through replication, transcription and translation, responsible for all biodiversity on earth, through various methods of recombination !
All organisms, be it multi/unicellular - cell is the functional and structural unit of life - share a common ancestry, and all these miracles are the result of nature and a double helix structure called DNA ( and RNA), which resides heavily coiled inside the cell, and its copying mechanism to produce new cells and offspring.
“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed thousands of years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
By the way, it is not very likely that, for example, in another galaxy, the life will be DNA-based (similar to our DNA).
So we should not focus on the particular hardware with which the life was implemented on our planet, but rather on the *structure* of developmental, or more generally formative, processes. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of biologists, this is *presently* a too abstract perspective. But the structure and organization of developmental processes are already playing an increasing role in biology.
“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”
This discussion is really interesting.
Let's imagine that some molecules important for the beginning of life on earth were brought to us by asteroids, comets and so on.
In such a perspective, it is impossible to know the origin of these extraterrestrial pieces of matter. Were they from our solar system? (probably, but)..
Were they from other near (or not so near) solar system?
Nevertheless if an astronomical object presenting similar conditions to our primitive earth approximately 4 billion years ago (with less free oxygen, more methane etc.) and more free energy (volcanos, electric storms, collision of more meteorites bringing more extraterrestrial matter... the generation of nucleic acids, aminoacids, fat acids, derived from hydrocarbons in this primeval milieu should be possible.
I think that I am escaping from the original idea, but...
Reminding several very interesting answers from our colleagues, and specially to the answers of Elena Kadyshewich and Issam Sinjab about the need for carbon.
I agree that carbon is very interesting as a skeleton for mounting the lateral chains with niters, phosphates etc due to the possibility of linking four atoms.
Suppose that the conditions for life appearing on a significant part of planets can (and perhaps should) be similar to ours, as the atoms are the same, the forces acting between them also, so that the molecules should be very similar ;
Nevertheless, silicon also has the same possibility, and we can therefore imagine the possibility of a silicon backbone too (or maybe other elements too).
In this point we in are playing exobiology, but we can assure that life can be originated at least in the way we know, and possibly in many other ways!
Nature a tasteful blend, which has all the solution on its own and it is you who need to realise.
Selection drives speciation and diversity, select and ye shall find ( the answers you are looking for).
From the anaerobic single cellular to complex aerobic multicellular organisms, mobility, replication, and interaction drive random selection in competition and cooperation for carbohydrate, lipid, amino acid and nucleic acid resources, which are accumulated and metabolized into cellular machinery by proteins under the flexible coding of the genome for survival.
Wash your hands after using the toilet. Do you know how long it took people to figure out that microorganisms transmit disease!
A year has passed, time to take stock of the various responses received so far. Most of them well illustrate that the central dogma of life on our Planet can essentially be compressed into just three letters : 'DNA'. Vice versa, suggestions above the molecular level, for instance on the making of biodiversity or on evolutionary pathways, remain the exception. Needless the say, the responses would have looked very different fifty years ago.
Rare or absent are the inputs derived from the biology of complexity (e.g., the biology of the brain), from exo-biology (e.g., life without DNA ?), not to mention bionics. I trust that this will be quite different by 2050.
This 'modern' DNA-centered perspective likely reflects a broad consensus that what is universal on our Earth- the 'primitive' RNA/ DNA building blocks- will ultimately prevail upon chaos, whether it comes in the form of environmental catastrophes or of a sixth extinction wave. A message of hope?
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