Should an iconic #bacterial #chassis be renamed without community consensus? Our @mbio.bsky.social #article vindicates the established identity of #Pseudomonas putida KT2440 & argues for continuity, community practice & common sense in naming · @vdlorenzo.bsky.social
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
What might this mean for AI? Maybe nothing. (Don't blame me, I didn't make the metaphor.)
But if the metaphor holds true, we're just before the decimation. Most AI companies, models, applications, etc. will go extinct. The survivors will not be the "best," but a lottery.
S.J. Gould called this the "decimation." This captures the period's two key features:
1. Magnitude: About 90% of Cambrian forms went extinct.
2. Randomness: Survival wasn't based on fitness or skill, but a lottery.
However, this wasn't the full picture. Later work revealed most animal forms evolved in the Cambrian went extinct!
Life has not become more diverse over time, it BEGAN at its maximal scope. But most did not survive. The few which did diversified into forms we know today.
Initially, scientists thought these were the ancestors of modern forms. The tree of life was like a "cone of increasing diversity." From a few basic branches came a continuously increasing number of subgroups.
AI, it's argued, is growing and diversifying in the same way.
The Cambrian explosion was a period ~500 million years ago when modern multicellular animals made their first appearance in the fossil record -- and with a bang. Virtually overnight (geologically speaking) a huge diversity of fossils evolved.
Tech CEOs claim there's been a "Cambrian Explosion in AI." This is usually just marketing-speak for "rapid, transformative growth."
But assuming the metaphor is accurate, maybe we can find clues for what's next--is there a bubble?--in what followed the ACTUAL Cambrian explosion?
We are very excited to have launched this new collaboration with @gardp.bsky.social! 🚀
This first jointly published commentary on #AMR by @kevinsblake.bsky.social & Gautam Dantas can also be read on our journal page: www.cmi-comms.org/article/S295...
#IDSky #clinmicro
📝 A new Antimicrobial Viewpoint by Kevin Blake and Gautam Dantas examines public framing of AMR and proposes alternatives to the war metaphor.
The piece is jointly published on REVIVE and CMI Communications.
🔗https://tinyurl.pulse.ly/jjtqv3dn37
Got a topic idea? Write to revive@gardp.org
It might! A key part to one theory is Fleming left a plate at room temp instead of incubating it. But why do that? Incubation affects the color of the staph colonies, which would be important for his agar art, so could be he didn’t incubate the plate because he was playing around with that.
Every biologist knows the story of Fleming's chance discovery of penicillin. But is it true?
Here, with @asimovpress.bsky.social, I write about inconsistencies in the canonical story, and explore a few alternative theories about what really happened in that St. Mary's lab in the summer of 1928.
I wrote about the history of the field of "experimental evolution" with @worksinprogress.bsky.social
Read it here 👉 www.worksinprogress.news/p/evolution-...
Darwin thought evolution required thousands of years, and was therefore out of reach from human experimentation.
But in one of the few forms of life he didn’t study -- microorganisms -- evolution can happen in mere months or weeks 🦠🧫
Read about it in my commentary with Gautam Dantas on @gardp.bsky.social and @cmicomms.bsky.social 👉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The "war on antibiotic resistance" won't end with brute force alone 💊🧫
Instead, eco-evo strategies take a more diplomatic approach. These seek to foster co-existence with microbes, rather than kill them. We metaphorize these as: disarmament, non-proliferation, and soft power.
Antibiotic resistance is portrayed as the enemy of modern medicine. But nothing in biology is inherently evil. Could it be useful, even “good”? 💊🔬
I wrote about using resistance enzymes to protect the gut microbiome from antibiotics and prevent secondary infections. 🧫🦠
Are chromosomes merely a laundry list of genes?
I wrote for @stcmicrobeblog.bsky.social about new research which finds that natural selection has organized nearly 2/3s of bacterial genes into specific positions on the chromosome 🧪 🧫 🧬
Where does antibiotic resistance come from? 💊🧫
I wrote for @asimovpress.bsky.social about proactive approaches for fighting resistance that shift focus from studying it in clinical pathogens to studying it at the source: soil-dwelling bacteria.
🌸 First flowering plants: 1/4 down the spire
🦖 Origins of the dinosaurs: 1/2 down the spire
🐚 Cambrian explosion: Third-floor platform
🦠 First eukaryotes: Between the second and third floors
🧫 Origins of bacteria: Somewhere below the first floor
Analogies like this can bring the 4.54 billion-year scope geological deep time, down to a more human level. Human origins might be just the "skin of paint" at the top but where does other life lie on the 1024 ft tower?
Mark Twain wrote, “If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age.” 🧪🌐
Multichannel pipette, in LEGO 🧪🔬
I wrote about the discovery of lariocidin, a new class of antibiotic from slow-growing soil bacteria.
{NatParksPalettes} now has >10k downloads! 🧪🎨⛰️🏜️
Very cool to see this little side project (really, done to procrastinate thesis experiments) be used by so many people.
