Molecular biologist John Tower from Dornsife University suggests that while living things generally prefer stability to preserve energy and resources, instability can also play an important role. A molecular biologist at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences may have discovered a new “biology rule.”
A biological rule, sometimes called a biological law, describes a known pattern or fact among living organisms. For example, Allen’s rule states that among warm-blooded animals, those living in cold regions (to maintain body temperature) have shorter and thicker limbs than those living in warmer regions, which need more body surface area to dissipate heat.
Zoologist Joel Allen formulated this idea in 1877, and although he was neither the first nor the last to propose a biological rule, he is one of the few to gain acceptance among scientists.
Now John Tower, professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife, believes he has discovered another law of biology. He published his idea in the magazine on May 16 The Limits of Aging .
Life may require instability
Tower’s rule challenges the long-held notion that most living organisms prefer instability to instability because it requires less energy and resources. For example, hexagons occur frequently in nature (think honeycombs and insect eyes) because they are stable and require the least amount of material to cover a surface.
Tower focuses his rule on instability, specifically a concept called “selective advantageous instability,” or SAI, in which certain variations in biological components such as proteins and genetic material favor cells.
Tower believes that SAI is a fundamental part of biology. “Even the simplest cells contain proteases and nucleases and regularly degrade and replace their proteins and RNA, indicating that SAI is essential for life,” he explains. SAI also plays an important role in evolution, he says.
He explains that as cells go about their business of building and breaking down various unstable components, they will exist in one of two states: one in which the unstable component is present, and the other in which the unstable component is absent.
Natural selection may act differently on the two states of the cell. “This means that if the normal gene is favorable in one cell state and the gene mutation is favorable in another cell state, it may contribute to the maintenance of both the normal gene and the gene mutation in the same cell population,” he says. By allowing for this genetic diversity, cells and organisms can be made more adaptable.
SAI may cause aging and more
Selectively advantageous instability may also contribute to aging. The creation and subsequent replacement of unstable components in cells occurs at the expense of materials and energy. It may also take additional energy to break it down.
Additionally, because SAI creates two potential states for the cell by allowing normal and mutated genes to coexist, it can contribute to aging if the mutated gene is harmful, Tower says.
Besides evolution and aging, SSI has other far-reaching consequences.
“Recently, concepts like chaos theory, criticality, Turing patterns, and ‘cellular consciousness’ have captured the scientific imagination,” says Tower. “Research in the field shows that the Court of Accounts played a significant role in creating each of these events.”
Because of its apparent ubiquity in biology and its far-reaching implications, he says, SSI may be biology’s newest rule.
Source: Port Altele
