̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - biology

Fish bellies, fava beans and food security

plc32 — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:20:27 +0000

Cambridge Zero and Cambridge Global Food Security gather academics and experts to share solutions for the planet’s looming food production problem.

Celebrating Women in STEM

plc32 — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 11:33:15 +0000

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science , two of our academics speak about their research careers and how they ended up using their STEM interests to tackle climate change.

‘Bouncing’ comets could deliver building blocks for life to exoplanets

sc604 — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:10:19 +0000

In order to deliver organic material, comets need to be travelling relatively slowly – at speeds below 15 kilometres per second. At higher speeds, the essential molecules would not survive – the speed and temperature of impact would cause them to break apart.

̽��ֱ��most likely place where comets can travel at the right speed are ‘peas in a pod’ systems, where a group of planets orbit closely together. In such a system, the comet could essentially be passed or ‘bounced’ from the orbit of one planet to another, slowing it down.

At slow enough speeds, the comet would crash on a planet’s surface, delivering the intact molecules that researchers believe are the precursors for life. ̽��ֱ��results, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, suggest that such systems would be promising places to search for life outside our Solar System if cometary delivery is important for the origins of life.

Comets are known to contain a range of the building blocks for life, known as prebiotic molecules. For example, samples from the Ryugu asteroid, analysed in 2022, showed that it carried intact amino acids and vitamin B3. Comets also contain large amounts of hydrogen cyanide (HCN), another important prebiotic molecule. ̽��ֱ��strong carbon-nitrogen bonds of HCN make it more durable to high temperatures, meaning it could potentially survive atmospheric entry and remain intact.

“We’re learning more about the atmospheres of exoplanets all the time, so we wanted to see if there are planets where complex molecules could also be delivered by comets,” said first author Richard Anslow from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “It’s possible that the molecules that led to life on Earth came from comets, so the same could be true for planets elsewhere in the galaxy.”

̽��ֱ��researchers do not claim that comets are necessary to the origin of life on Earth or any other planet, but instead they wanted to place some limits on the types of planets where complex molecules, such as HCN, could be successfully delivered by comets.

Most of the comets in our Solar System sit beyond the orbit of Neptune, in what is known as the Kuiper Belt. When comets or other Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) collide, they can be pushed by Neptune’s gravity toward the Sun, eventually getting pulled in by Jupiter’s gravity. Some of these comets make their way past the Asteroid Belt and into the inner Solar System.

“We wanted to test our theories on planets that are similar to our own, as Earth is currently our only example of a planet that supports life,” said Anslow. “What kinds of comets, travelling at what kinds of speed, could deliver intact prebiotic molecules?”

Using a variety of mathematical modelling techniques, the researchers determined that it is possible for comets to deliver the precursor molecules for life, but only in certain scenarios. For planets orbiting a star similar to our own Sun, the planet needs to be low mass and it is helpful for the planet to be in close orbit to other planets in the system. ̽��ֱ��researchers found that nearby planets on close orbits are much more important for planets around lower-mass stars, where the typical speeds are much higher.

In such a system, a comet could be pulled in by the gravitational pull of one planet, then passed to another planet before impact. If this ‘comet-passing’ happened enough times, the comet would slow down enough so that some prebiotic molecules could survive atmospheric entry.

“In these tightly-packed systems, each planet has a chance to interact with and trap a comet,” said Anslow. “It’s possible that this mechanism could be how prebiotic molecules end up on planets.”

For planets in orbit around lower-mass stars, such as M-dwarfs, it would be more difficult for complex molecules to be delivered by comets, especially if the planets are loosely packed. Rocky planets in these systems also suffer significantly more high-velocity impacts, potentially posing unique challenges for life on these planets.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their results could be useful when determining where to look for life outside the Solar System.

“It’s exciting that we can start identifying the type of systems we can use to test different origin scenarios,” said Anslow. “It’s a different way to look at the great work that’s already been done on Earth. What molecular pathways led to the enormous variety of life we see around us? Are there other planets where the same pathways exist? It’s an exciting time, being able to combine advances in astronomy and chemistry to study some of the most fundamental questions of all.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Royal Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Richard Anslow is a Member of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Reference:
R J Anslow, A Bonsor and P B Rimmer. ‘Can comets deliver prebiotic molecules to rocky exoplanets?’ Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2023.0434

How did the molecular building blocks for life end up on Earth? One long-standing theory is that they could have been delivered by comets. Now, researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have shown how comets could deposit similar building blocks to other planets in the galaxy.

It’s possible that the molecules that led to life on Earth came from comets, so the same could be true for planets elsewhere in the galaxy

Richard Anslow

solarseven via Getty Images

Artist's impression of a meteor hitting Earth

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Humanity’s quest to discover the origins of life in the universe

sc604 — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 17:10:32 +0000

For thousands of years, humanity and science have contemplated the origins of life in the Universe. While today’s scientists are well-equipped with innovative technologies, humanity has a long way to go before we fully understand the fundamental aspects of what life is and how it forms.

“We are living in an extraordinary moment in history,” said Professor Didier Queloz, who directs the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe at Cambridge and ETH Zurich’s Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life. While still a doctoral student, Queloz was the first to discover an exoplanet – a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. ̽��ֱ��discovery led to him being awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In the three decades since Queloz’s discovery, scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets. Trillions more are predicted to exist within our Milky Way galaxy alone. Each exoplanet discovery raises more questions about how and why life emerged on Earth and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe.

Technological advancements, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and interplanetary missions to Mars, give scientists access to huge volumes of new observations and data. Sifting through all this information to understand the emergence of life in the universe will take a big, multidisciplinary network.

In collaboration with chemist and fellow Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak and astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, Queloz announced the formation of such a network at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington, DC. ̽��ֱ��Origins Federation brings together researchers studying the origins of life at Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Harvard ̽��ֱ��, and ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago.

Together, Federation scientists will explore the chemical and physical processes of living organisms and environmental conditions hospitable to supporting life on other planets. “ ̽��ֱ��Origins Federation builds upon a long-standing collegial relationship strengthened through a shared collaboration in a recently completed project with the Simons Foundation,” said Queloz.

These collaborations support the work of researchers like Dr Emily Mitchell from Cambridge's Department of Zoology. Mitchell is co-director of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and an ecological time traveller. She uses field-based laser-scanning and statistical mathematical ecology on 580-million-year-old fossils of deep-sea organisms to determine the driving factors that influence the macro-evolutionary patterns of life on Earth.

Speaking at AAAS, Mitchell took participants back to four billion years ago when Earth’s early atmosphere - devoid of oxygen and steeped in methane – showed its first signs of microbial life. She spoke about how life survives in extreme environments and then evolves offering potential astrobiological insights into the origins of life elsewhere in the universe.

“As we begin to investigate other planets through the Mars missions, biosignatures could reveal whether or not the origin of life itself and its evolution on Earth is just a happy accident or part of the fundamental nature of the universe, with all its biological and ecological complexities,” said Mitchell.

̽��ֱ��founding centres of the Origins Federation are ̽��ֱ��Origins of Life Initiative (Harvard ̽��ֱ��), Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life (ETH Zurich), the Center for the Origins of Life ( ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago), and the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

̽��ֱ��Origins Federation will pursue scientific research topics of interest to its founding centres with a long-term perspective and common milestones. It will strive to establish a stable funding platform to create opportunities for creative and innovative ideas, and to enable young scientists to make a career in this new field. ̽��ֱ��Origins Federation is open to new members, both centres and individuals, and is committed to developing the mechanisms and structure to achieve that aim.

“ ̽��ֱ��pioneering work of Professor Queloz has allowed astronomers and physicists to make advances that were unthinkable only a few years ago, both in the discovery of planets which could host life and the development of techniques to study them,” said Professor Andy Parker, head of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. “But now we need to bring the full range of our scientific understanding to bear in order to understand what life really is and whether it exists on these newly discovered planets. ̽��ֱ��Cavendish Laboratory is proud to host the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and to partner with the Origins Federation to lead this quest.”

Scientists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Harvard ̽��ֱ��, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago have founded the Origins Federation, which will advance our understanding of the emergence and early evolution of life, and its place in the cosmos.

ETH Zurich/NASA

L-R: Emily Mitchell, Didier Queloz, Kate Adamal, Carl Zimmer

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

AI used to test evolution’s oldest mathematical model

sc604 — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 18:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex, the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Natural History Museum London used their machine learning algorithm to test whether butterfly species can co-evolve similar wing patterns for mutual benefit. This phenomenon, known as Müllerian mimicry, is considered evolutionary biology’s oldest mathematical model and was put forward less than two decades after Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

̽��ֱ��algorithm was trained to quantify variation between different subspecies of Heliconius butterflies, from subtle differences in the size, shape, number, position and colour of wing pattern features, to broad differences in major pattern groups.

This is the first fully automated, objective method to successfully measure overall visual similarity, which by extension can be used to test how species use wing pattern evolution as a means of protection. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that different butterfly species act both as model and as mimic, ‘borrowing’ features from each other and even generating new patterns.

“We can now apply AI in new fields to make discoveries which simply weren’t possible before,” said lead author Dr Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “We wanted to test Müller’s theory in the real world: did these species converge on each other’s wing patterns and if so how much? We haven’t been able to test mimicry across this evolutionary system before because of the difficulty in quantifying how similar two butterflies are.”

Müllerian mimicry theory is named after German naturalist Fritz Müller, who first proposed the concept in 1878, less than two decades after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Müller’s theory proposed that species mimic each other for mutual benefit. This is also an important case study for the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence, in which the same features evolve again and again in different species.

For example, Müller’s theory predicts that two equally bad-tasting or toxic butterfly populations in the same location will come to resemble each other because both will benefit by ‘sharing’ the loss of some individuals to predators learning how bad they taste. This provides protection through cooperation and mutualism. It contrasts with Batesian mimicry, which proposes that harmless species mimic harmful ones to protect themselves.

Heliconius butterflies are well-known mimics, and are considered a classic example of Müllerian mimicry. They are widespread across tropical and sub-tropical areas in the Americas. There are more than 30 different recognisable pattern types within the two species that the study focused on, and each pattern type contains a pair of mimic subspecies.

However, since previous studies of wing patterns had to be done manually, it hadn’t been possible to do large-scale or in-depth analysis of how these butterflies are mimicking each other.

“Machine learning is allowing us to enter a new phenomic age, in which we are able to analyse biological phenotypes - what species actually look like - at a scale comparable to genomic data,” said Hoyal Cuthill, who also holds positions at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and ̽��ֱ�� of Essex.

̽��ֱ��researchers used more than 2,400 photographs of Heliconius butterflies from the collections of the Natural History Museum, representing 38 subspecies, to train their algorithm, called ‘ButterflyNet’.

ButterflyNet was trained to classify the photographs, first by subspecies, and then to quantify similarity between the various wing patterns and colours. It plotted the different images in a multidimensional space, with more similar butterflies closer together and less similar butterflies further apart.

“We found that these butterfly species borrow from each other, which validates Müller’s hypothesis of mutual co-evolution,” said Hoyal Cuthill. “In fact, the convergence is so strong that mimics from different species are more similar than members of the same species.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also found that Müllerian mimicry can generate entirely new patterns by combining features from different lineages.

“Intuitively, you would expect that there would be fewer wing patterns where species are mimicking each other, but we see exactly the opposite, which has been an evolutionary mystery,” said Hoyal Cuthill. “Our analysis has shown that mutual co-evolution can actually increase the diversity of patterns that we see, explaining how evolutionary convergence can create new pattern feature combinations and add to biological diversity.

“By harnessing AI, we discovered a new mechanism by which mimicry can produce evolutionary novelty. Counterintuitively, mimicry itself can generate new patterns through the exchange of features between species which mimic each other. Thanks to AI, we are now able to quantify the remarkable diversity of life to make new scientific discoveries like this: it might open up whole new avenues of research in the natural world.”

Reference:
Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill et al. ‘Deep learning on butterfly phenotypes tests evolution’s oldest mathematical model.’ Science Advances (2019). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw4967

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to make new discoveries, and confirm old ones, about one of nature’s best-known mimics, opening up whole new directions of research in evolutionary biology.

We can now apply AI in new fields to make discoveries which simply weren’t possible before

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill

J Hoyal Cuthill, photo credits S Ledger and R Crowther

Butterfly co-mimic pairs from the species Heliconius erato (odd columns) and Heliconius melpomene (even columns). Illustrated butterflies are sorted by greatest similarity (along rows, top left to bottom right)

Yes

Cambridge spin-out company wins £18m to fight Alzheimer's

plc32 — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 10:27:38 +0000

A biopharmaceutical company set-up by Cambridge academics from St John's College to develop drugs to treat illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s and more than 50 other related diseases has won £18 million in a Series A financing round.

Wren Therapeutics raised the funding from an international syndicate led by ̽��ֱ��Baupost Group with participation from LifeForce Capital and a number of high net worth individual investors.

Several of the company’s scientific founders are members of St John’s, including Professor Sir Christopher Dobson, Master of St John's, Professor Tuomas Knowles, a St John's Fellow, and Dr Samuel Cohen, the St John’s Entrepreneur in Residence.

Wren Therapeutics focuses on drug discovery and development for protein misfolding diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and was founded in 2016.

Protein molecules form the machinery which carry out all of the executive functions in living systems. However, proteins sometimes malfunction and become misfolded, leading to a complex chain of molecular events that can cause long-lasting damage to the health of people affected and may ultimately lead to death.

This group of medical disorders are known as protein misfolding diseases. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are widely recognised protein misfolding diseases, but others include type-2 diabetes, motor neurone disease and more than 50 other related illnesses.

Dr. Cohen explained: “Protein misfolding diseases are one of the most critical global healthcare challenges of the 21st century but are highly complex and challenging to address. Current strategies - in particular those driven by traditional drug discovery and biological approaches - have proven, at least to date, to be ineffective.

“Wren’s new and unique approach is instead built on concepts from the physical sciences and focuses on the chemical kinetics of the protein misfolding process, creating a predictive and quantitatively driven platform that has the potential to radically advance drug discovery in this class of diseases.”

Wren Therapeutics is a spin-off company from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Lund ̽��ֱ�� in Sweden. ̽��ֱ��company is based at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in the recently opened Chemistry of Health Centre, and plans on opening a satellite office in Boston, Massachusetts.

Professor Sir Christopher Dobson said: "Wren is built on many years of highly collaborative, uniquely integrated, interdisciplinary research that has uncovered the key molecular mechanisms associated with protein misfolding diseases.

"I am hugely enthusiastic about our ability to make tangible progress against these diseases and change the course of life for millions of people around the world suffering from these debilitating and increasingly common medical disorders.”

̽��ֱ��company will announce its board of directors shortly.

Wren Therapeutics secures £18 million in funding to tackle protein misfolding diseases.

"I am hugely enthusiastic about our ability to make tangible progress against these diseases"

Professor Sir Christopher Dobson

Dr Samuel Cohen, Entrepreneur in Residence at St John's and CEO of Wren Therapeutics

Yes

Opinion: Robots and AI could soon have feelings, hopes and rights … we must prepare for the reckoning

ljm67 — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 12:07:33 +0000

Get used to hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence. Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will broadly be defined not just by advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them. For some, the question of whether or not the human race will live to see a 22nd century turns upon this latter consideration. While forecasting the imminence of an AI-centric future remains a matter of intense debate, we will need to come to terms with it. For now, there are many more questions than answers.

It is clear, however, that the European Parliament is making inroads towards taking an AI-centric future seriously. Last month, in a 17-2 vote, the parliament’s legal affairs committee voted to to begin drafting a set of regulations to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence and robotics. Included in this draft proposal is preliminary guidance on what it calls “electronic personhood” that would ensure corresponding rights and obligations for the most sophisticated AI. This is a start, but nothing more than that.

If you caught any of the debate on the issue of “electronic” or “robot” personhood, you probably understand how murky the issues are, and how visceral reactions to it can be. If you have not caught any of it, now is a good time to start paying attention.

̽��ֱ��idea of robot personhood is similar to the concept of corporate personhood that allows companies to take part in legal cases as both claimant and respondent – that is, to sue and be sued. ̽��ֱ��report identifies a number of areas for potential oversight, such as the formation of a European agency for AI and robotics, a legal definition of “smart autonomous robots”, a registration system for the most advanced ones, and a mandatory insurance scheme for companies to cover damage and harm caused by robots.

̽��ֱ��report also addresses the possibility that both AI and robotics will play a central role in catalysing massive job losses and calls for a “serious” assessment of the feasibility of universal basic income as a strategy to minimise the economic effects of mass automation of entire economic sectors.

We, Robots

As daunting as these challenges are – and they are certainly not made any more palatable given the increasingly woeful state of geopolitics – lawmakers, politicians and courts are only beginning to skim the surface of what sort of problems, and indeed opportunities, artificial intelligence and robotics pose. Yes, driverless cars are problematic, but only in a world where traditional cars exist. Get them off the road, and a city, state, nation, or continent populated exclusively by driverless cars is essentially a really, really elaborate railway signalling network.

Artificial minds will need very real rights. Shutterstock

I cannot here critique the feasibility of things such as general artificial intelligence, or even the Pandora’s Box that is Whole Brain Emulation – whereby an artificial, software-based copy of a human brain is made that functions and behaves identically to the biological one. So let’s just assume their technical feasibility and imagine a world where both bespoke sentient robots and robotic versions of ourselves imbued with perfect digital copies of our brains go to work and “Netflix and chill” with us.

It goes without saying that the very notion of making separate, transferable, editable copies of human beings embodied in robotic form poses both conceptual and practical legal challenges. For instance, basic principles of contract law would need to be updated to accommodate contracts where one of the parties existed as a digital copy of a biological human.

Would a contract in Jane Smith’s name, for example, apply to both the biological Jane Smith and her copy? On what basis should it, or should it not? ̽��ֱ��same question would also need to be asked in regard to marriages, parentage, economic and property rights, and so forth. If a “robot” copy was actually an embodied version of a biological consciousness that had all the same experiences, feelings, hopes, dreams, frailties and fears as their originator, on what basis would we deny that copy rights if we referred to existing human rights regimes? This sounds like absurdity, but it is nonetheless an absurdity that may soon be reality, and that means we cannot afford to laugh it off or overlook it.

There is also the question of what fundamental rights a copy of a biological original should have. For example, how should democratic votes be allocated when copying people’s identities into artificial bodies or machines becomes so cheap that an extreme form of “ballot box stuffing” – by making identical copies of the same voter – becomes a real possibility?

Should each copy be afforded their own vote, or a fractional portion determined by the number of copies that exist of a given person? If a robot is the property of its “owner” should they have any greater moral claim to a vote than say, your cat? Would rights be transferable to back-up copies in the event of the biological original’s death? What about when copying becomes so cheap, quick, and efficient that entire voter bases could be created at the whim of deep-pocketed political candidates, each with their own moral claim to a democratic vote?

How do you feel about a voter base comprised of one million robotic copies of Milo Yiannopolous? Remember all that discussion in the US about phantom voter fraud, well, imagine that on steroids. What sort of democratic interests would non-biological persons have given that they would likely not be susceptible to ageing, infirmity, or death? Good luck sleeping tonight.

Deep thoughts

These are incredibly fascinating things to speculate on and will certainly lead to major social, legal, political, economic and philosophical changes should they become live issues. But it is because they are increasingly likely to be live issues that we should begin thinking more deeply about AI and robotics than just driverless cars and jobs. If you take any liberal human rights regime at face value, you’re almost certainly led to the conclusion that, yes, sophisticated AIs should be granted human rights if we take a strict interpretation of the conceptual and philosophical foundations on which they rest.

Who will win the AI vote? Shutterstock

Why then is it so hard to accept this conclusion? What is it about it that makes so many feel uneasy, uncomfortable or threatened? Humans have enjoyed an exclusive claim to biological intelligence, and we use ourselves as the benchmark against which all other intelligence should be judged. At one level, people feel uneasy about the idea of robotic personhood because granting rights to non-biological persons means that we as humans would become a whole lot less special.

Indeed, our most deeply ingrained religious and philosophical traditions revolve around the very idea that we are in fact beautiful and unique snowflakes imbued with the spark of life and abilities that allow us to transcend other species. That’s understandable, even if you could find any number of ways to take issue with it.

At another level, the idea of robot personhood – particularly as it relates to the example of voting – makes us uneasy because it leads us to question the resilience and applicability of our most sacrosanct values. This is particularly true in a time of “fake news”, “alternative facts”, and the gradual erosion of the once proud edifice of the liberal democratic state. With each new advancement in AI and robotics, we are brought closer to a reckoning not just with ourselves, but over whether our laws, legal concepts, and the historical, cultural, social and economic foundations on which they are premised are truly suited to addressing the world as it will be, not as it once was.

̽��ֱ��choices and actions we take today in relation to AI and robotics have path-dependent implications for what we can choose to do tomorrow. It is incumbent upon all of us to engage with what is going on, to understand its implications and to begin to reflect on whether efforts such as the European Parliament’s are nothing more than pouring new wine into old wine skins. There is no science of futurology, but we can better see the future and understand where we might end up in it by focusing more intently on the present and the decisions we have made as society when it comes to technology.

When you do that, you realise we as a society have made no real democratic decisions about technology, we have more or less been forced to accept that certain things enter our world and that we must learn to harness their benefits or get left behind and, of course, deal with their fallout. Perhaps the first step, then, is not to take laws and policy proposals as the jumping-off point for how to “deal” with AI, but instead start thinking more about correcting the democratic deficit as to whether we as a society, or indeed a planet, really want to inherit the future Silicon Valley and others want for us.

To hear more about the future of AI and whether robots will take our jobs, listen to episode 10 of ̽��ֱ��Conversation’s monthly podcast, ̽��ֱ��Anthill – which is all about the future.

Christopher Markou, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Is artificial intelligence a benign and liberating influence on our lives – or should we fear an impending rise of the machines? And what rights should robots share with humans? Christopher Markou, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, suggests an urgent need to start considering the answers.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

“Map Of Life” predicts ET. (So where is he?)

tdk25 — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 23:01:07 +0000

Extra-terrestrials that resemble humans should have evolved on other, Earth-like planets, making it increasingly paradoxical that we still appear to be alone in the universe, the author of a new study on convergent evolution has claimed.

̽��ֱ��argument is one of several that emerge from ̽��ֱ��Runes Of Evolution, a new book in which the leading evolutionary biologist, Professor Simon Conway Morris, makes the case for a ubiquitous “map of life” that governs the way in which all living things develop.

It builds on the established principle of convergent evolution, a widely-supported theory – although one still disputed by some biologists – that different species will independently evolve similar features.

Conway Morris argues that convergence is not just common, but everywhere, and that it has governed every aspect of life’s development on Earth. Proteins, eyes, limbs, intelligence, tool-making – even our capacity to experience orgasms – are, he argues, inevitable once life emerges.

̽��ֱ��book claims that evolution is therefore far from random, but a predictable process that operates according to a fairly rigid set of rules.

If that is the case, then it follows that life similar to that on Earth would also develop in the right conditions on other, equivalent planets. Given the growing number of Earth-like planets of which astronomers are now aware, it is increasingly extraordinary that aliens that look and behave something like us have not been found, he suggests.

“Convergence is one of the best arguments for Darwinian adaptation, but its sheer ubiquity has not been appreciated,” Professor Conway Morris, who is a Fellow at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said.

“Often, research into convergence is accompanied by exclamations of surprise, describing it as uncanny, remarkable and astonishing. In fact it is everywhere, and that is a remarkable indication that evolution is far from a random process. And if the outcomes of evolution are at least broadly predictable, then what applies on Earth will apply across the Milky Way, and beyond.”

Professor Conway Morris has previously raised the prospect that alien life, if out there, would resemble earthlings – with limbs, heads, and bodies – notably at a Royal Society Conference in London in 2010. His new book goes even further, however, adding that any Earth-like planet should also evolve thunniform predators (like sharks), pitcher plants, mangroves, and mushrooms, among many other things.

Limbs, brains and intelligence would, similarly, be “almost guaranteed”. ̽��ֱ��traits of human-like intelligence have evolved in other species – the octopus and some birds, for example, both exhibit social playfulness – and this, the book suggests, indicates that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of evolution that would characterise extraterrestrials as well.

Underpinning this is Conway Morris’ claim that convergence is demonstrable at every major stepping stone in evolutionary history, from early cells, through to the emergence of tissues, sensory systems, limbs, and the ability to make and use tools.

̽��ֱ��theory, in essence, is that different species will evolve similar solutions to problems via different paths. A commonly-cited example is the octopus, which has evolved a camera eye that is closely similar to that of humans, although distinctive in important ways that reflect its own history. Although octopi and humans have a common ancestor, possibly a slug-like creature, this lived 550 million years ago and lacked numerous complex features that the two now share. ̽��ֱ��camera eye of each must therefore have evolved independently.

Conway Morris argues that this process provides an underlying evolutionary framework that defines all life, and leads to innumerable surprises in the natural world. ̽��ֱ��book cites examples such as collagen, the protein found in connective tissue, which has emerged independently in both fungi and bacteria; or the fact that fruit flies seem to get drunk in the same manner as humans. So too the capacity for disgust in humans – a hard-wired instinct helping us avoid infection and disease – is also exhibited by leaf-cutter ants.

̽��ֱ��study also identifies many less obvious evolutionary “analogues”, where species have evolved certain properties and characteristics that do not appear to be alike, but are actually very similar. For example, “woodpeckerlike habits” are seen in lemurs and extinct marsupials, while the mechanics of an octopus’ tentacles are far closer to those of a human arm than we might expect, and even their suckers can operate rather like hands.

Conway Morris contends that all life navigates across this evolutionary map, the basis of what he describes as a “predictive biology”. “Biology travels through history,” he writes, “but ends up at much the same destination”.

This, however, raises fascinating and problematic questions about the possibility of life occurring on other planets. “ ̽��ֱ��number of Earth-like planets seems to be far greater than was thought possible even a few years ago,” Conway Morris said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that they have life, because we don’t necessarily understand how life originates. ̽��ֱ��consensus offered by convergence, however, is that life is going to evolve wherever it can.”

“I would argue that in any habitable zone that doesn’t boil or freeze, intelligent life is going to emerge, because intelligence is convergent. One can say with reasonable confidence that the likelihood of something analogous to a human evolving is really pretty high. And given the number of potential planets that we now have good reason to think exist, even if the dice only come up the right way every one in 100 throws, that still leads to a very large number of intelligences scattered around, that are likely to be similar to us.”

If this is so, as the book suggests in its introduction, then it makes Enrico Fermi’s famous paradox – why, if aliens exist, we have not yet been contacted – even more perplexing. “ ̽��ֱ��almost-certainty of ET being out there means that something does not add up, and badly,” Conway Morris said. “We should not be alone, but we are.”

̽��ֱ��Runes Of Evolution was six years in the making and draws on thousands of academic sources, and throws up numerous other, surprising findings as well. Sabre-teeth, for example, turn out to be convergent, and Conway Morris explains why it is that the clouded leopard of Asia, Neofelis nebulosa, has developed features that could, as it evolves “presage the emergence of a new sabre-tooth”, although sadly it looks set to become extinct before this happens. Elsewhere, the study suggests that certain prehistoric creatures other than bats and birds may have attempted to evolve flight.

“It makes people slightly uneasy that evolution can end up reaching the same solutions to questions about how to catch something, how to digest something, and how to work,” Conway Morris added. “But while the number of possibilities in evolution in principle is more than astronomical, the number that actually work is an infinitesimally smaller fraction.”

̽��ֱ��Runes Of Evolution, by Simon Conway Morris, is published by Templeton Press

Inset images:
Top: Shark by Jeff Kubina; Pitcher Plant by NH53; Mangrove by Roberto Verzo; Mushroom by Aleksey Gnilenkov
Middle: Disgust by Stuart Hamilton; Leaf Cutter Ants by Steve Corey
Bottom: Saber-tooth Cat by Chuck Peterson

̽��ֱ��author of a new study of evolutionary convergence argues that the development of life on Earth is predictable, meaning that similar organisms should therefore have appeared on other, Earth-like planets by now.

̽��ֱ��almost-certainty of ET being out there means that something does not add up, and badly. We should not be alone, but we are.

Simon Conway Morris

Albert Kok, via Flickr. Homepage image: Eye of the Octopus by Klaus Stiefel

̽��ֱ��camera eye of an octopus is structurally similar to that of a human, but has evolved independently, making it a classic example of convergent evolution.