Period and Ellipsis. Biological Part of the Final Column for Computerra
More than two weeks have passed since I drafted the final column on the Computerra website. In principle, I could have published it myself, but since my work has been suspended, I offered to the magazine's owner, Dmitry Mendrelyuk, to make this text available to readers. He said he didn't want me to touch on politics in it.
← Dmytro Shabanov
Political fragment of the concluding column for "Komp'yuterra" Period and ellipsis. Biological part of the concluding column for "Komp'yuterra"
Columns for "Komp'yuterra"
More than two weeks have passed since I drafted the final column on the Computerra website. In principle, I could have published it myself, but since my work has been suspended, I offered to the magazine's owner, Dmitry Mendrelyuk, to make this text available to readers. He said he didn't want me to touch on politics in this text. I removed the political fragment (here, I've posted it on this site here). Unfortunately, the edited column never appeared on the KT site. My access to the magazine's site is closed (and that's why I'm not posting the final version of the text here, which has remained on the site — I'm only removing the already-published political fragment). In the meantime, Mendrelyuk has put Computerra up for sale. Well — I'll post the unprinted text here. Alas, my ten-year collaboration with Computerra (everything done during that time is gathered here) is over. All good things come to an end sooner or later. Computerra has informed me that at present they cannot commission columns from me. I'm upset, but I cannot take offense. For three years I enjoyed a very valuable opportunity and wrote about whatever interested me. Now the situation has changed. Well — thanks for what was. During my three years working for online Computerra, I wrote 139 columns. Honestly, each column required substantial time from me, and I cannot continue such work on a volunteer basis. I haven't broken any pots, and I don't plan to; if the situation changes for the better, I will probably be glad to continue such work. Alas, the development of events depends on a multitude of circumstances, many of which are not determined by me or by Computerra. The columns gave me an opportunity to advance my understanding of topics that interest me. I will outline directions of thought that are important to me with a few theses: — the goals people pursue are determined by innate, biologically predetermined mechanisms that switch their behavioral strategies (i.e., the hierarchy of their priorities); — studying our evolutionary history is the key to understanding our properties; even the development of our culture cannot be understood without including it in the context of the "evolution of the evolution" of life as a whole; — to understand the logic of our evolution, we must consider the developing object as a whole — as the epigenetic theory of evolution does; — in the near future, humanity's way of life will inevitably change; how this will happen and how it will end, we can only guess on the basis of more or less shaky models; — no "objective" knowledge exists; the best we can do is search for rules that allow us to choose models of reality that make us most adaptive; — a significant portion of efforts directed at nature conservation is spent on false (such as "organic" food and the fight against GMOs) and secondary goals; the actions of environmentally concerned public opinion are directed by propaganda campaigns rather than by analysis of the situation; — a change in humanity's way of life will require a change in the character of education; it must include not only new learning technologies but also new goals; — the key to understanding the dynamics of hierarchically organized systems is the analysis of optimization vectors at different levels and the features of information exchange between levels; this is exactly where the causes of the "Invisible Hand" and "Invisible Foot" phenomena are rooted; — the hybridogenic complex of green frogs is an exceptionally successful model for studying multilevel selection and the evolution of recombination. If over time it becomes possible to continue work in the same vein, I will try to return to these topics. If it doesn't work out, I'll look for other formats. Recently I wrote eight "sex" columns, which would be more accurately called columns dedicated to the evolution of recombination. As they were being written, the topic acquired new branches. It's impossible to discuss everything I want in this column, but I'll try to achieve some intermediate clarity. I began the "sex" columns with a diagram reflecting the classification of population reproduction types. Meditating on it, I came to the conclusion that this classification reflects the action of two main factors and several secondary ones. The reproduction types we discussed can be placed on a plane defined by the main factors: the nature of recombination and the presence or absence of the double cost of dioecy. [IMG_1] I can no longer discuss this diagram in detail here. If everything were going as I would have liked, I would have devoted at least a couple of columns to discussing interspecific recombination in semiclonal hybrids. In those populations where hybrid individuals live together with representatives of the parental species, hybrids pass on a clonal genome from generation to generation, while the recombinant one is used over and over throughout the lifetime of a single individual and then discarded. I wrote about this, remember? But sometimes clonal transmission is disrupted, and fragments of the recombinant genome end up in the clonal genome. "From the point of view" of the clonal genome, its recombination is sharply reduced, but not halted. Proceeding from our models, we assume that semiclonal hybrids may give rise to population systems in which only the combination of several clonal genomes occurs. They have not been found in nature; my colleagues and I are trying to obtain such systems artificially. Alas, this is a long matter, and quickly confirming or refuting these ideas will not work. It is important to remember that recombination may be non-homologous (a fragment of someone else's genetic "text" falls into a random place) and homologous (someone else's text is substituted in place of one's own analogous fragment). Do you see what kind of series is taking shape? Type Ia. Non-homologous interspecific recombination. Types II and III. Homologous intraspecific recombination. Type IVa. Homologous interspecific recombination. Among other things, one needs to understand the logic of transitions from type to type. We discussed (here, here and here) the reasons for the I→II transition. We were convinced that the II→III transition may be related to the fact that in many cases type II turns out to be unstable in the Nash sense. We discussed two different potential paths for the emergence of dioecy. One of the columns described and (illustrated with a model) the transition from hermaphroditism to dioecy; another described and (illustrated with a model) the transition from isogamy to anisogamy. A notable feature of the explanations described in my columns is a certain redundancy. It can be considered that they explain the origin of dioecy twice. That is worse than once — but in an exhaustive manner. Why can the transition from isogamy to anisogamy, which we discussed last time, also be regarded as the emergence of dioecy? In the course of the changes we discussed, organisms that produce either small or large gametes had to arise. The emergence of beings that would simultaneously produce a mixture of gametes of two different sizes seems to me extremely improbable. In the previous sentence the key word is "simultaneously"… I think that understanding the logic behind the origin of hermaphroditism will be made possible by analysis of the evolution of life cycles. Not all hermaphrodites fertilize each other simultaneously, as ciliates and grape snails do. It happens that at one stage of their life organisms produce spermatozoa, and at another — egg cells. To understand why they do that, one needs to analyze their ontogenetic strategies. Oh, what a field for modeling here… When I find the right framework for this, I will continue this line of reasoning. There are still interesting topics there. I have already hinted that the reasons for which we are mortal closely intersect with the reasons for which we practice the sexual process. And that's not all… Yes, recently I have written not only about recombination. I wrote three columns dedicated to the anti-criminal revolution in Ukraine; two of them were published in Computerra. The political fragment in that column has already been published on this site. Political conversations age quickly… I would very much like to find the opportunity to write again not about politics, but about complex problems of biology. Thank you, Computerra, and thank you to its readers!
← Dmytro Shabanov
Political fragment of the concluding column for "Komp'yuterra" Period and ellipsis. Biological part of the concluding column for "Komp'yuterra"
Columns for "Komp'yuterra"