Our origins represented in religion proved a useful tool for the emerging science of the Enlightenment with the image of a tree, sometimes with roots, and other times, a trunk and numerous branches. This became the linear model for the theory of how life came to be on Earth, starting with the first cell and branching out into the representational tree. The assumption is a single seed, cell, and point of origin.

Why do we look at origins when it comes to life in such a linear way?

What Predated Life?

A recently published article in Scientific American asks the question “How did life begin?” It describes the research of a team led by evolutionary biologist Bill Martin, from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany. They argue that evidence shows that life began twice on Earth.

The question of where life began is discussed in the article, pointing to hydrothermal vents as the most likely source of “genesis,” the name that inspired the field of genetics and derived from the Greek γένεσις, meaning “origin.” 

Hydrothermal vents, Martin argues, are likely where our universal common ancestor emerged. Called the ur-organism, it was a bacterium-like cell from which all life on Earth descends. Was it alive? Not necessarily. It may have been more like a self-contained, membrane-sheathed droplet filled with chemical ingredients that were the precursors of life, including some form of genetic encoding.

The article talks about a half-alive ancestor that responded to the energy and mineral output of the hydrothermal vent environment that introduced prebiotic elements, the second origin factor, to the mix. The ur-organism’s absorption of the prebiotic element, when combined with its encoding capability, allowed, during replication, the passing along of genetic traits to create the first functioning cell. Martin calls it “one origin of the genetic code but two origins of life.”

Multiple Origins Abound

As interesting as the Martin team hypothesis is, others point to a multiple origins hypothesis.

Why would life emerge from a “singularity” when so much of what we observe on Earth today doesn’t reflect single origins?

For example, look at the emergence of human language. Today, humans communicate using over 7,000 spoken languages. Of these, a little more than half are written. Characterizing language has produced incredible discontinuities. Look at Egyptian hieroglyphics versus Greek. They bear no resemblance to each other even though their origins are in reasonable geographic proximity. When hieroglyphics became lost to history, it took a Rosetta Stone for us to decipher the former because of the accompanying Greek translation.

At a restaurant a few days ago, one wall was covered in Thai script. When I did some research, I found that the Thai written language originates from South India. Like hieroglyphics, it bears no resemblance to the written languages to which we are more familiar. The same can be said about Chinese, 3,300 years ago, or Mesoamerican scripts from Central Mexico and the Yucatán, 2,700 years ago.

Did an Ancestral Cell Lead to All Life?

What supports a single origin and the subsequent tree is the one thing we find common to all living things here on Earth: DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

Most scientists see DNA’s emergence as the genesis moment. Could other molecules have existed here on Earth to produce life based on a different set of rules? What if life in the Universe could have entirely different molecular origins, each begetting its own Tree of Life?

Today’s biology begins with the tree supporting multiple branches coming from common ancestors. And those representations show a trunk often supported by a bundle of roots; none of the latter represent an alternate molecular derivation.

Abiogenesis: A Different Genesis Story

The theory of alternative biochemistries with different molecules leading to life is called abiogenesis. Here on Earth, DNA triumphed, but what was here before that victory?

Self-replicating RNA (ribonucleic acid), the simpler nucleic cousin of DNA, may have ruled before it took the former’s architecture and bound it to sugars.

Return missions from asteroids have brought back samples containing the nucleic and amino acid components common to DNA and RNA: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil. These samples have also been infused with sugars and thousands of other life-friendly chemicals.

In a pre-RNA and DNA world, we could have seen TNA (threose nucleic acid), PNA (peptide nucleic acid) and GNA (glycol nucleic acid) self-replicating molecules.

DNA’s eventual triumph over the three others mentioned above, other competitors, and RNA may have resulted because it was chemically more complex, which gave it greater flexibility. DNA proved to be more stable during replication than RNA, with lower mutation rates. Then DNA developed a collegial relationship with RNA, an effective partnership that other complex molecules may not have been able to duplicate. It proved to be a winning combination based on what we see here on Earth today.

Is DNA the only molecule in the Universe capable of producing life? In laboratories, experiments have produced synthetic alternatives to DNA. Would DNA likely produce cellular life elsewhere? Changes to Earth’s environment, such as much hotter or colder temperatures, higher radiation exposure, and highly acidic or alkaline water, would have made DNA less likely as the originator of life on Earth.

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Fortunately, she survived the trauma of numerous hospitalizations, two open-heart operations, a valve implant done experimentally through a catheter, and a pregnancy; she is doing well physically and has a five-year-old, our granddaughter. The last experimental procedure was a stopgap supposed to last five years. It has endured well over twenty years and appears to still be in good shape.

Her travails made me study the science behind heart birth defects, which affect 8 to 10 per 1,000 child births. That number accounts only for those children receiving a clinical diagnosis of a congenital heart disease or defect (CHD). It doesn’t include those never diagnosed. That’s why the World Health Organization (WHO), in a 2026 report, states that the occurrence of CHD is almost twice as high, affecting between 1.4 and 2.3% of all children born each year globally, or almost 1 for every 50 live births.

CHD Defined

CHDs are structural abnormalities that are diagnosed in utero or after birth. Unlike acquired heart disease, which adults get, CHDs are physical defects in the walls that separate the heart’s four chambers, obstructions that block the major arteries, arterial transpositions and fusions, damaged or missing valves, and other malformations. CHDs cause rhythm disturbances. They damage the lungs and other major organs.

Sometimes, CHDs remain undetected until adulthood, often discovered incidentally or because of a different medical condition. Many CHDs, however, require early intervention, often within a week to a month after birth to ensure a child’s survival. Between 1990 and 2023, according to the WHO, CHD was a leading cause of infant mortality within the first 28 days after birth.

CHD Types

VSD

The most common CHD, representing up to 40% of all cases, is a hole in the wall that separates the two lower heart chambers called ventricles. This is a ventricular septal defect or VSD. The ventricles are the principal pumping chambers that push blood throughout the body.

ASD

The second most common CHD, up to 10%, involves holes in the wall separating the two upper chambers, the atria. This is an atrial septal defect or ASD. It often is missed as a diagnosis until adulthood.

PDA

A third CHD is Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA). Before birth, the PDA is a blood vessel that connects the placenta to the child’s circulatory system. With the first breaths causing the lungs to inflate, the natural pressure from this anatomical change forces the PDA to close, usually within hours, if not a few days. If the PDA doesn’t close, it compromises the lungs and reduces the amount of oxygen circulating through the body.

Children with a PDA at birth who live in high altitudes can be undiagnosed for years. Only when they descend to lower elevations do they become symptomatic as ambient air pressure rises, compromising the lungs.

Genetic and Developmental Triggers for CHD

When our daughter was diagnosed, the cardiologists at the time mentioned genetic mutations as one potential cause. Genetic causes of CHD mean changes occurring to DNA sequences. Some are called trisomies; others, microdeletions. These coding errors can be familial or result from viral pathogens disrupting normal cell functions.

Developmental triggers involve disruptions to the normal sequence of heart formation, occurring during the first 12 weeks of embryonic development. These are heritable modifications that influence gene activity and RNA function, leading to errors in timing and sequencing during the critical formation of the organ’s four chambers and attendant blood vessels.

Environmental Triggers for CHD

The most significant environmental factor affecting a developing fetus is a mother’s health prior to and during the next nine months. For example, maternal diabetes is a known trigger of CHD. Others include medications, nutritional deficiencies, illnesses, smoking, alcohol, and age.

Maternal exposure to environmental contaminants before and during pregnancy can trigger CHDs. These are not limited to exposure to high concentrations of airborne particulate matter, ground-level ozone, radon gas, solvents, herbicides, microplastics and other contaminants.

Cell Signalling, Mutated Proteins and CHD

What in our cells can trigger CHD? TAK1, TAB2 and PKA-Cα are proteins that impact signalling antennae which sit on the exterior of the cell wall.

Søren Tvorup Christensen is a Professor of Cell Biology at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, where researchers have identified the above-mentioned three proteins and the signalling antennae that appear to be responsible for delivering molecular instructions to embryonic stem cells that develop into heart muscle cells.

An article in the journal PLOS Biology on August 4, 2026, describes the University’s research that uncovered the proteins and the signalling mechanism. Lars Allan Larsen, a professor in the University’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, in a presser, described what was found:

“We have discovered a new communication system on the exterior of the cell that is crucial for the proper formation of the heart during embryonic development. This finding changes our understanding of how congenital heart defects arise. You could say that we have identified an important cog in a highly complex machine.”

Working with zebrafish, mouse and human embryonic stem cells, as well as other lab-grown cell types, the research showed that the genes encoding TAK1 and, to a lesser extent, the other signalling proteins produced rare variants leading to multisystem disorders including heart development.

In zebrafish, the mutations of TAK1 and TAB2 caused cardiac and extracardiac developmental defects. In human patients with CHD, genetic analysis indicated similar mutational variants in TAK1 and TAB2 proteins. Abnormal skeletal and organ development appears to be a consequence of these protein mutations, which may explain our daughter’s additional birth defects along with the CHD.

Christensen’s summary comments attempt to sum up what their study discovered, stating:

“This may explain why some patients with congenital heart disease also have defects and related conditions affecting the brain, kidneys, and skeleton. The mechanism provides a unifying explanation for diseases that we have previously struggled to understand.”

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DNA was only first discovered in 1869, with its structure only figured out in 1953. In 1990, the same year that Jurassic Park was published, the Human Genome Project launched to assemble and decode human DNA.

Unlike in Jurassic Park, we have yet to sequence DNA from fossil insects trapped in amber, let alone from the blood these insects sucked up from the species they tormented.

What we do have is recovered DNA from preserved organic materials of animals and plants that died thousands of years ago. Why thousands and not millions? That’s because DNA remains coherent for a very short period of time, in fact, a little over 500 years, the chemical half-life of the molecule.

The best conditions for preserving DNA are dry, cold environments. Exposure to ultraviolet light causes it to rapidly decay. The places where we have successfully recovered DNA are in places like Greenland, Siberia and the Canadian Arctic. That is where we have found preserved DNA dating from 700,000 to 2.4 million years ago.

De-Extinction in the Present

Unlike Jurassic Park, where long-extinct dinosaurs were brought back to life by crossing their recovered DNA with that of living amphibians, current de-extinction realities are different.

Colossal Biosciences is a biotech company that claims to be the world’s first and only de-extinction company. Its website tag line states “disruptive conservation and preservation.” Colossal describes its mission “to preserve and restore Earth’s diminishing biodiversity” through scientific intervention.

Of 42,108 current species on the planet that are endangered, Colossal notes that 9,251 are at a critical stage, with 902 already extinct. Colossal wants to restore the past and end the “rapid and accelerating loss of our planet’s biodiversity.”

How does Colossal plan to do this? One process has involved resurrecting core genetic material and implanting it into existing species. Here are some examples.

De-extinction of Woolly Mammoths

Colossal is focusing on a post-Ice Age species, the Woolly Mammoth. Mammoths were relatives of modern elephants. They died out on mainland North America approximately 10,000 years ago. An island-isolated population remained lingering on in Canada’s North until between 4,000 and 4.300 years ago.

Remains of Woolly Mammoth have been found frozen in permafrost, making it possible to extract their ancient DNA. Using modern elephants as hosts, Colossal intends to insert Mammoth DNA segments into the genome of Asian Elephant using pluripotent stem cells. The embryos created would be implanted and carried to term. The result would be an engineered modern Asian Elephant bearing Woolly Mammoth traits, not the actual Mammoth of the past, but rather, a hybrid.

Why bring back the Woolly Mammoth? When mammoths roamed the Arctic, they served as Ice Age grazers, clearing the snow pack to allow tundra grasslands to flourish, and spreading seeds in their dung to expand the range of Arctic plants. Their trampling of snow kept the permafrost from thawing. Their activities supported increased Arctic biodiversity. So, there may be a good argument to bring back the Mammoth.

De-extinction of the Moa

The Moa, a giant flightless bird from New Zealand, is a more recent extinction that occurred shortly after the arrival of the Māori, the first humans to reach the archipelago over 600 years ago.

Moas didn’t last long after humans arrived and were soon extinct. Mainly herbivores, Moas served a useful role in maintaining New Zealand’s forest ecosystems. Once gone, forest biodiversity declined.

Unlike Woolly Mammoths, Moas were not creatures that lived in cold environments. To extract surviving DNA, scientists turned to bones, feathers, eggshells and beaks found in remains. From these, the scientists could sequence many DNA fragments. They compared these fragments to similar ones found in related bird species. Emus, Australia’s large flightless bird, come to mind.

To incubate an Emu with Moa characteristics requires inserting the DNA into Emu eggs at an early stage. Colossal has considered a different strategy, 3D-printed eggs, which I expound on below.

De-extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger

The Tasmanian Tiger, also known as the Tasmanian Wolf or Thylacine, was a carnivorous marsupial native to Tasmania. When European colonizers arrived there, the Tasmanian Tiger was a threat to sheep and other domesticated species brought to the island. The result was that the government put a bounty on the Tiger, with the last one dying in captivity in 1936.

Finding DNA from museum-preserved Tigers isn’t a big challenge. Scientists have sequenced 99.9% of the Tiger’s genome. Its closest living relative is the Dunnart, a tiny, mouselike marsupial. Using CRISPR gene-editing tools, Colossal hopes to edit the DNA of the Fat-tailed Dunnart.

A tiny Dunnart, however, could never carry a baby Tiger to term. That’s why Colossal is developing an artificial womb. The hoped-for result will be a hybrid Tiger breeding population in captivity with the potential of reintroduction into the Tasmanian wilds. Will that just create the same conditions that led to a bounty on every Tiger’s head?

3D-Printed Eggs and Artificial Wombs

Moas and Dodos from Printed Eggshells

Colossal recently started producing 3D-printed eggshells and successfully used them to incubate baby chickens. This technology could conceivably be used to revive the Moa, as well as other extinct species like the Dodo.

To develop a 3D egg to incubate Moas would require a shell 80 times larger because Moas could stand 3.6 to 3.7 metres (11.8 to 12.1 feet) in height, and weigh 230 kilograms (approximately 500 pounds).

The artificial eggshell contains a permeable membrane that allows oxygen to penetrate just like real eggshells. To compensate for the lack of calcium, which normally gets absorbed from the shell, Colossal added calcium to aid chicken embryo growth and development.

Moa resurrection, even with this latest innovation, remains a long way off. More than likely, Colossal will end up inventing a hybrid bird species with Moa genetic traits. That conclusion is easy to reach since all efforts by the company to date to revive species have used living species of animals as hosts and produced hybrids displaying a mix of genetic characteristics.

Dinosaurs from Printed Eggshells

The likelihood of this Jurassic Park scenario happening is zero. We might be able to modify a bird’s genes to create something that looks like a dinosaur, but it won’t be because we have reconstructed the latter’s DNA.

Sixty-six-million-year-old molecules no longer exist, so we wouldn’t know where to start in trying to recreate a dinosaur’s genome. The only living dinosaur relatives are birds, with no current way for us to determine what, if anything, in their DNA is still dinosaur.

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There are 3,500 known species of mosquitoes and counting, found in almost every eco niche on Earth. Mosquitoes are incubators for parasites which they spread from species to species, in some cases, causing disease and death. Malaria, spread by mosquitoes, killed 619,000 people in 2021. Most of the victims were under the age of 5.

It seems, therefore, to be a legitimate question to ask,

“What would happen if we eradicated mosquitoes from the planet?” 

A lot of unintended consequences.

Mosquitoes And Climate Change

As the planet warms, mosquito-borne diseases are spreading to areas where they have never been endemic in recent history. Climate change facilitates the spread of vector-borne diseases like West Nile, Malaria, Dengue, Zika, Chikungunya and Yellow Fever.

I asked Perplexity.ai to summarize the impact mosquito-borne diseases have on humanity. This is the chart it produced:

Among the above-mentioned diseases, Dengue is the fastest-growing over the last 60+ years and is endemic in over 120 countries today. The Aedes aegypti mosquito that hosts the Dengue virus lives in proximity to human populations. It likes the clutter of dense urban areas where standing water provides fast-breeding opportunities.

Malaria is the best-known mosquito-borne disease. It is endemic in Africa, with Nigeria reporting 31% of the continent’s cases. Anopheles mosquitoes spread the disease as hosts of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite. Insecticide overuse has led to growing mosquito population resistance. The need for alternative control strategies is, therefore, a global imperative.

Combatting Mosquitoes

Traditional approaches to fighting mosquito-borne diseases include eliminating stagnant water breeding grounds such as ponds, ditches, swamps, and standing water sources around homes and buildings. A few years ago, Toronto reported its first West Nile Virus cases caused by the spread of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into Southern Ontario. Homeowners were asked to remove rainwater collection sites like old tires and pots, and to unblock eavestroughs and rain gutters, all potential breeding sites.

Using genetic engineering is a high-tech deterrent now being employed. A recent mosquito control program has introduced genetically modified sterile males to be released into the wild. The British company, Oxitec, has pioneered this technology in a series of test trials covering five countries. It has targeted Aedes aegypti populations responsible for spreading West Nile, Dengue, Zika, Chikungunya and Yellow Fever.

Crashing mosquito populations can produce negative ecosystem consequences. Why?

Mosquitoes are a food source for amphibians, reptiles, birds, bats, fish, spiders and other insects.

Mosquito larvae live in water where they play a significant role both as a food source and in maintaining freshwater environments. Freshwater today is a scarce commodity.

Eliminating breeding populations at the larval stage has negative impacts above the water, with adult winged populations crashing. Losing mosquito pollinators, therefore, has consequences for plants.

Fortunately, Oxitec and other sterilization experiments have been limited to date, with the vast majority of the 3,500 mosquito species unaffected.

Targeted Genetic Modifications That Don’t Kill Mosquitoes

What about other genetic modification strategies?

Previously, I wrote on this blog site about the World Mosquito Program (WMP). This Australian-founded research program has genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. These modifications don’t sterilize. Instead, they create genetic changes that block intracellular disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and parasites that make the mosquito a carrier. (See the image appearing at the top of this posting.)

A paper published in the journal Annals of Medicine in 2024 describes additional research using gene drive technologies. A group of African universities and medical research institutions were involved in publishing work on gene-drive technology to control malaria-spreading mosquitoes. The research involves deploying the CRISPR gene-editing tool to modify mosquito DNA sequences to inhibit malaria. The desired outcome is to create inherited traits from generation to generation to produce a better than 50% reduction in the wild population’s disease transmission rates.

Altering mosquito genes without reducing their numbers is considered ideal.

Ethical Questions and Eco Considerations

Could a genetically altered mosquito spread through the natural environment and compete with other benign mosquito species, leading to their extinction? Could cross-breeding in the wild create unintended negative consequences, producing a super spreader, and could genetically modified mosquitoes cause irreversible negative impacts on biodiversity? Then there is the need to advise the public and get informed consent when deploying gene-drive technology experiments.

In the referenced paper, the authors express the hope that gene-drive technology is the tool to eradicate malaria, and by extension, other vector-borne diseases spread through mosquito bites.

For the millions who suffer from vector-borne diseases, this type of research with guardrails in place should turn gene-drive technologies into “a robust, cost-effective, and sustainable prospect” and ensure humans, animals and mosquitoes can find an ecological balance in the 21st century.

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Lysenko and the Art of Pseudoscience

Trofim Lysenko was born in Ukraine and studied agronomy in Kyiv. In the early 1920s, he proposed a theory based on the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who in the 18th century theorized that a parent could pass along characteristics to offspring through changes in behaviour. The example Lamarck used was the giraffe. How did it get such a long neck? Lamarck stated that in trying to eat leaves higher up in a tree, over time, giraffe offspring would grow longer necks.

In adopting Lamarck’s explanation for inherited traits, Lysenko ignored the theory of evolution as espoused by Charles Darwin. Instead, Lysenko believed that crops could be educated by exposing them to new environmental conditions, such as cold. In this way, the plants would acquire new traits and pass them along to subsequent generations. Lysenko also believed plants selected their mates and sacrificed themselves so that others could live.

Darwin’s explanation of how inheritance worked employed natural selection, that is, favourable traits ensured survival of a species, allowing it to breed and pass along what made it successful to subsequent generations. Lysenko ignored Mendelian genetics and Darwin in proposing his pseudoscientific theory.

While working in Azerbaijan in the 1920s, he met Joseph Stalin, who soon would become the leader of the Soviet Union. Lysenko convinced Stalin of Lysenkoism, and when Stalin assumed national leadership, he made it national policy and named Lysenko his Minister of Agriculture.

More than 3,000 Russian scientists who disagreed with Lysenko’s theory were purged, with many sent to gulags. Meanwhile, Lysenko applied his theory to agricultural practices on collective farms, producing crop failures and famine. The pseudoscience transcended agriculture, affecting other fields of biological and scientific research. It persisted long after Stalin died in 1953 and wasn’t sanctioned in the Soviet Union until 1965. The damage to Russia was followed by Lysenkoism’s adoption in the People’s Republic of China. During the Great Leap Forward spanning 1958 to 1962, Lysenkoism contributed to crop failures and the Great Chinese Famine that killed tens of millions.

RFK Jrs Pseudoscientific Terrain Theory

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his views on science bear a strong resemblance to Lysenko’s brand of pseudoscience. RFK denies germ theory. Instead, he promotes miasma theory, which dates back to 400 BCE. Hippocrates attributed epidemics in Greece to μίασμα (miasma), defined as atmospheric corruptions linked to decay and foul smells.

Until the work of Louis Pasteur and the development of germ theory, miasma theory remained the predominant belief of physicians and scientists when explaining how people got sick and how disease spread.

RFK’s spin on miasma involves renaming it. He calls it terrain theory, with the body being the aforementioned “terrain.” Our terrain, according to RFK, is influenced negatively by poor nutrition, exposure to pesticides and environmental pollutants, toxins and vaccines.  RFK acknowledges viruses and bacteria exist, but sees them as minor irritants. Instead, he sees miasmata as the primary source of weakened immunity. The list of miasmata includes:

• chemicals like fluoride in drinking water,
• electromagnetic radiation from cellphones, microwaves, and power lines,
• chemtrails like contrails from jet aircraft.

RFK believes Alzheimer’s, autism and many respiratory conditions are caused by environmental exposure to aluminum nanoparticles.

Asthma, ADHD and immune disorders are linked to exposure to barium salts.

Chronic fatigue, dementia and cancer are caused by exposure to strontium and other heavy metals.

RFK wants Americans to strengthen their terrain. To a degree, there is validity in eating healthy, exercising regularly, and practicing good hygiene. The terrain theory, however, ignores viruses and bacteria and rejects medical advances like vaccines that target these microbes. That’s because RFK doesn’t believe germs are the primary agents of disease, just a sideshow.

His pseudoscience is impacting health policy in the United States, and his anti-vaccine pronouncements are causing the return of childhood diseases that had practically gone extinct. His pronouncements on diet have no scientific basis.

In 2026, RFK is as dangerous as Lysenko was in the Soviet Union and China from the 1920s to the mid-1960s.

The post Trofim Lysenko Was to Stalin as RFK Jr. is to Trump – Two Dangerous Crackpots appeared first on Techso Mogro.

1. The Silurian Hypothesis
2. Changes to the geomagnetic field linked to atmospheric oxygenation events
3. Evolutionary fast tracking called autopolyploidy

The Silurian Hypothesis

A friend of mine sent me a recent article describing the Silurian Hypothesis. This theory was first proposed by Adam Frank and Gavin Schmidt, the former an astrophysicist, the latter a climate scientist.

Frank and Schmidt described the conveyor belt of plate tectonics and erosion as wiping out evidence from Earth’s past. They noted that most of the Earth’s crust is recycled every 170 million years. The few exceptions are places like the Canadian Shield. They also described why the fossil record is incomplete because conditions for fossilization are rare, with only a tiny percentage of animals and plants leaving evidence of their existence in rocks.

Frank and Schmidt posed the Silurian Hypothesis, noting that if finding life from the past is so difficult, imagine trying to find evidence of past civilizations that might have existed and vanished hundreds of millions of years ago.

A civilization that existed millions of years ago wouldn’t be like the archaeological discoveries that are merely a few thousand years old. When the Spanish conquered Central and South America, vanquishing the Aztec and Inca Empires, they were unaware of the prior existence of a Mayan civilization. When Europeans first crossed the Appalachian Mountains in the 17th century, they described a wilderness of forests and grasslands where a century earlier, Indigenous villages thrived. The evidence for their existence was almost missed.

Frank and Schmidt noted that the evidence for our existence in a geological period now named the Anthropocene would largely exist as artifacts in cities, which occupy a mere 1% of the planet’s surface. A geologist of the future would likely never find these artifacts. Our existence might be discovered from the presence of plastics found within sandstone and limestone sedimentary rocks. Frank and Schmidt also suggest that nuclear waste residue and long-term chemical traces could be found by geologists of the future to indicate our existence in the past. However, the crustal conveyor belt would only give future geologists a relatively small window of time to discover if that civilization existed nearly 170 million years in the past.

Neither scientist claims such a past civilization existed. The purpose of the Silurian Hypothesis, they state, is to show how difficult it is to find evidence of a technologically advanced civilization after a few million years.

Atmospheric Oxygenation And Earth’s Magnetic Field 

Could past changes to Earth’s magnetic field be connected to oxygenation events from Earth’s past? Benjamin Mills is a biogeochemist at the University of Leeds and a co-author of a study published this month in the journal Science Advances that has compiled a record for the last 540 million years indicating a strong relationship between oxygen levels in the atmosphere and changes to the planet’s magnetic field.

The earliest evidence of life on Earth can be found in the geological record dating back 3.5 billion years. Was life only possible within the shield of our planet’s magnetic field, and when changes to it occurred, could that impact life?

Earth’s magnetic field has fluctuated throughout the planet’s past. Generated by convection currents in the liquid core that interact with the planet’s natural rotation, the magnetic field is a natural dynamo.

Currents within the molten iron and nickel core, however, vary over time, which causes changes to where the magnetic north and south poles are, and can even produce polarity reversals. We can see a record of the magnetic field changes in the alignment of crystals in magnetized volcanic rocks produced throughout Earth’s history.

The magnetic field is credited with shielding our atmosphere from the solar wind and cosmic rays, which have played havoc with the atmosphere of Mars, where its weaker and uneven magnetic field led to the planet losing most of its atmosphere over time.

The study was able to deduce historic oxygen levels from the chemical content of rocks and minerals at the time of their formation. It then compared that to the pattern of changes in magnetized rocks over similar periods. It turned out the two data sets aligned with changes to the magnetic field correlating with rising and falling patterns of oxygen in the atmosphere going back to the Cambrian Explosion, the moment when complex life on Earth first emerged.

So far, the research from the Cambrian to the present shows an alignment between magnetic field changes and atmospheric oxygen levels. Further research will look at correlations that stretch further back in time as well as the dynamics of other atmospheric gases, particularly nitrogen, to see if it is equally affected by magnetic field changes.

Autopolyploidy: The Key To Rapid Evolution

A paper recently published in the journal The American Naturalist describes how plants that are defined as autopolyploid can create genetic diversity in an instant. One of the plants that can do this is the Beetleweed, commonly found in the Appalachian Mountain region of the United States. You can see Beetleweed in the above picture.

In the absence of others of its kind, an autopolyploid can reproduce, creating an extra copy of its DNA and two identical sets of chromosomes. These plants can, therefore, perpetuate a species without sex. In reproductive isolation, they can become the dominant version within an ecosystem. Any chromosomal variation caused by external influences instantly becomes a common trait for the entire autopolyploid plant community.

Imagine a sudden environmental collapse that wipes out entire species of plants. In the absence of other fellow plant species, this ability to generate a double set of DNA ensures survival and rapid population recovery.

Autopolyploids can quickly differentiate as mutations breed true within descendants. Within a local area that started with a single autopolyploid plant, it can beget a diverse population that appears to be more responsive to environmental stresses than diploid plants that require two to tango. It turns out that where autopolyploidy predominates, the plant offspring show improved tolerance to environmental stress such as drought, saline soils, and temperature extremes.

The post Stories About Life’s Emergence And Variability That Caught My Eye appeared first on Techso Mogro.

Where rocketeers like Elon Musk see engineering as the key to human survival in space and places like Mars, McKee argues that these traditional technology approaches require humanity to forever live in bubbles or, in the case of Mars, domed habitats where Earth-like environments are replicated.

Here on Earth, we are already familiar with genetic engineering. Before we started messing with genes, we were engineering new species through selective breeding. Now we are doing it at the cellular level using tools like CRISPR Cas9. We even have the tools to do gene sequencing in space. MinION is a technology developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies which has allowed astronauts on the International Space Station to sequence the genomes of microorganisms using a handheld device.

Having mapped the human genome and developed tools to reconstruct it, we now have the means to change ourselves to better fit the places where we want to go. That’s what synthetic biology will help us do, a technology that British biologist Jamie A. Davies calls “the creation of new living systems by design.” Creationists must be rolling over in their graves.

Why will synthetic biology be key to making it possible for humanity to fulfil what John Wyndham, in one of his science fiction novels, labelled the Outward Urge? In Wyndham’s book, he outlines a series of steps as humanity first builds a space station, establishes settlements on the Moon, lands on Mars, and initiates human exploration of Venus. Except for the last evolutionary step, Wyndham appears to have drawn the route map by which NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are navigating.

Today, we do not know if there are Martians. If they have existed and still do, they are likely microorganisms that arose four billion years ago in the planet’s past and have survived its changes to become the dry, cold desert that it is today. Whatever we do on Mars, if Martians exist, we need to protect them before we start messing with the planet, as some advocate.

Terraforming Mars for Earth life is the dream of many science fiction writers. Terraforming involves introducing synthetic microorganisms to alter the planet to make it habitable for Earth life.

Other than finding a way to turn an inhospitable environment into one that is habitable, why would humans choose synthetic biology as the primary tool?

One good reason is to make it cheaper to exploit and inhabit the planet. The SpaceX plan to colonize Mars involves hundreds of Starships hauling freight between Earth and Mars over the next several decades. The cost of such an effort would make the Apollo Program budget from the 1960s look like a rounding accounting error.

Another reason is that, rather than attempting to rapidly alter an entire planet (let’s not talk about the two variables: time and cost), creating synthetic organisms and even re-engineering ourselves would be a far easier means to an end.

Change Mars Or Change Us

Humans are poorly adapted for living “off-world.” Our biological systems take a beating in space. Just ask the astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts about what happens when exposed to microgravity, low gravity, extreme radiation and more during and after their time onboard low-Earth orbiting space stations.

After we know what, if anything, is still alive on Mars, we could consider introducing microbes designed to change the planet. These microbes would be synthetic and built for specific tasks. One could be designed to produce oxygen and sequester carbon dioxide (CO2). Another could fix nitrogen and remove perchlorate in the soil. Any microbes we engineer would have to withstand cosmic and solar radiation. They would be capable of thriving in lower amounts of sunlight, and like extremophiles and psychrophiles here on Earth, propagate in toxic and extreme cold conditions.

Once conditions were more Earth-like, synthetic biology could re-engineer the familiar plant staples that feed our planet. Terraforming would create conditions where re-engineered plants could survive on the planet’s surface. Once plants are thriving on Mars, the atmosphere will thicken and become more Earth-like. A greenhouse effect would begin to transform the planet.

How long would this terraforming experiment last before Mars became a second Earth? Estimates vary between two centuries to millennia.

On the other hand, using synthetic biology and genetic engineering could turn homo sapiens into homo sapiens martianus or just homo martianus.

Homo martianus would have re-engineered genetics to deal with the low gravity of Mars (38% of Earth’s gravity). Gravity on Earth impacts bone density and muscles. An enhanced LRP5 gene could make our bones better suited to life on Mars.

To deal with the low oxygen environment of Mars, we would enhance genes that make homo martianus efficiently use oxygen in similar ways to how Tibetans and Andeans do in high altitude conditions on Earth.

To cope with radiation, genes like p53 that suppress cancerous tumours could be enhanced.

We could consider inserting genes from extremophiles and psychrophiles to make homo martianus comfortable with Martian realities.

We could alter human metabolism so that homo martianus would require less food and water to thrive.

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When growing rice there is a downside. Rice produces significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. How significant is illustrated in the subtitle of a recent article that appeared on the World Wildlife Fund site. It says, “Side of rice, hold the methane.” If only we could.

Rice Has A Methane and Nitrous-Oxide Problem

When tracking the rise in atmospheric temperatures over the last three decades, carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t the prime suspect. It is methane (CH4), a short-term potent GHG with a greater warming impact over 12 to 14 years than CO2. Rice farming is a big contributor producing 12% of global CH4 emissions and 1.5% of our total human contributions.

Traditional flooding of paddy fields is the main cause responsible for between 50 and 80% of total CH4 emissions coming from rice cultivation. GHG-emitting bacteria thrive in flooded fields. Other than cranberries, I can’t think of another crop that begins its growth cycle under water. Rice cultivation because of this early submergence produces up to 5.7 times more GHGs than wheat and corn.

Rice also produces nitrous oxide (N2O). Its cultivation contributes 11% of total agricultural N2O emissions. N2O like CO2 is a long-lasting GHG and is 300 times more potent than CO2 and remains in the atmosphere nine times longer than CH4.

Almost all varieties of rice are grown in paddies. The rice needs the bacteria in the water to release soil nutrients to support plant growth. That’s why scientists are trying to identify the organic compounds called root exudates that are produced by the roots of rice plants. If the worst CH4-producing compounds can be isolated, then it becomes possible to develop a new rice variety that produces less of the GHG.

Finding Ways to Produce Rice With Less GHGs

There are two approaches to developing rice varieties that belch fewer GHGs. The first involves identifying characteristics in rice plants that produce less CH4 and through selective breeding produce low-CH4 output. The second involves genetically modifying rice to eliminate the traits that produce CH4-emitting organic compounds.

Cross-Breeding Produces LFHE Rice – A breakthrough for the former method has been published in the February 3, 2025, scientific journal, Molecular Plant. The published research reveals that LFHE rice produced through conventional cross-breeding produces 70% less CH4 compared to other varieties.

LFHE rice has been tested in field trials in China with yields of 8.96 tons per hectare. Compared to average global rice yields of 4.71 tons per hectare in 2024, this represents a more than 90% improvement in yield which for countries facing food insecurity is significant.

Genetically Modified Rice Eliminates CH4 – Rather than selective breeding, SUSIBA2 rice was developed through genetic intervention in 2015. A barley gene insertion into the rice plant has produced two important effects: CH4 reductions of 90% and crop yields in Chinese test fields comparable to those for LFHE rice.

Finding Ways to Accept the Benefits of GM Rice

Many countries, however, have barred GM crops from being grown or sold. This resistance by governments to GM crops boggles my mind and that of many agronomists and geneticists.

Consider the case of golden rice.

Golden rice is a GM rice version that organizations like Greenpeace have protested against. Developed in 1999, GM golden rice involved inserting genes from daffodils, corn, and a soil bacterium to bind Vitamin A within the rice without affecting it in other ways. It significantly increased beta-carotene production in the plant and gave the rice a golden-yellow look.

Golden rice was developed to address Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) common to the poorest people of Africa and Southeast Asia whose diets were heavily rice-dependent. VAD, states the World Health Organization (WHO), affects 250 million people globally, 40% of them being children under the age of five living in the Developing World.

UNICEF statistics show VAD is responsible for between one and two million preventable deaths annually. Adding Vitamin A to the diet is critical. Without it, the immune system, particularly of babies and young children is compromised.

VAD is the leading cause of childhood blindness on Earth affecting 250,000 to 500,000 children annually. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

Yet GM golden rice, 25 years after development, has just been banned in the Philippines and currently is under threat of being banned in Bangladesh. These bans are counterintuitive considering that a 2019 nutrition survey done in the Philippines noted that 15.5% of Filipino infants and children aged six months to five years suffered from VAD. The Philippines provided no VAD mortality figures. A 2012 survey of preschool-age children in Bangladesh indicated 20.5% suffered from VAD with 30,000 going blind each year and at least half dying within weeks of the first blinding episode.

Let’s hope that countries that are as heavily rice-dependent as the aforementioned two are more science-aware of the benefits of new breeds of rice including GM varieties that address food insecurity and dietary deficiencies.

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Many staple crops have evolved natural resilience and tolerance to changing climate conditions like El Niños. Recently, however, climate predictability is going by the wayside with ramifications for food security.

Of all staple crops, rice is the one most eaten globally and has been most imperilled by climate change in recent decades. In Asia, 75% of calories consumed come from eating rice, which is extremely heat-sensitive. When an El Niño event happened in 2015, heat contributed to a 15 million-ton drop in rice production throughout Southeast Asia. Rice prices caused a 16% inflationary bump.

Philippine researchers have linked temperature increases to rice yield declines. The ratio is for every 1 degree Celsius rise in the minimum temperature during the growing season, yields decline 10%. That’s why agricultural scientists are targeting the rice genome to identify those genes related to heat tolerance of which there are 97.

Wheat is another global staple crop feeling the effects of global heating. In Asia, every 1-degree increase in minimum temperatures translates to a 6% decline in wheat yields. That’s why agronomists are testing 3,322 new wheat varieties since 2021 with the hope of identifying strains that produce better yields in more extreme heat conditions.

Developing new varieties of wheat and rice can be done through conventional cross-breeding. Increasingly, however, genome editing is preferred because compared to conventional breeding which can take multiple generations to produce results, genetic engineering is much faster taking less than a third of the time.

Hiroshi Maeda, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin in Madison is working on modifying citrus crops like oranges and grapefruit. In the United States citrus farmers face devastating challenges from climate change including extreme weather events and freshwater scarcity. Maeda and his colleagues have also taken the genetic modification route to make citrus climate resilient. He states:

“Climate change is happening so fast that classical breeding approaches are not enough to overcome the challenges we are facing. It took 10,000 years for us to domesticate the crops, and we do not have that kind of time. We must accelerate the process using biotechnology, gene editing and transgenic approaches.”  

Another staple crop is sorghum which is closely related to corn and an ingredient used to make cereals and pasta. Areas where sorghum is grown in the United States have witnessed extreme temperature changes in recent times with an expanding Arctic polar vortex causing chilling stresses and crop losses.

Rebecca Roston, a plant scientist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is studying plants like sorghum and how they respond to temperature changes, especially cold. Her research looks at the lipid composition of plant cell membranes and how they withstand freezing temperatures. States Roston:

“The reality is that the cold has driven human habitation and agriculture for millennia, and it is a problem that is so big that we don’t see it because it’s opportunity loss, not direct crop loss.”

Roston is using lipidomic sequencing to analyze sorghum and a cold-tolerant cousin plant, foxtail millet, and to understand the metabolic influences that affect crop stress. Unsaturated fatty acids contained within the plant membrane are key to promoting plant survival at low temperatures.

Soybeans have proven to be sensitive to disappearing ozone caused by increases in greenhouse gasses and smog. Notes Joseph Jez, a professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, a 1% decrease in the ozone layer corresponds to a 1% drop in soybean yields and since 1979, the ozone threshold has plummeted by more than 47%. That means a race against time to up the ability of soybeans using gene editing and modifications in the face of a more hostile growing environment. Jez notes:

“The plants we have now are not going to be the plants we have in 2050. The big unknown is whether we can either breed or edit the path forward to make plants survive the climate of 2050 or 2100.”

Climate-resilient future crops like corn, rice, sorghum, soybeans and wheat are being epigenetically modified to deal with drought and heat. Rice is being altered genetically to survive flood-prone growing areas. These staple crops are re-engineered to tolerate higher salt levels in the soil as sea levels rise. Re-engineered to withstand diseases, fungi and insect pests, plants are being weaponized against all of these.

In addition, scientists are enhancing photosynthesis in plants to help them grow faster. Root systems are being engineered to go deeper to find water and to become carbon sequestration storage sites. And finally, plants like rice are being modified to use less water and produce lower methane emissions from paddies.

It is a brave new world we face as the planet heats up and agronomists and geneticists try to develop new armour for our plants to survive the anthropogenic climate change that is taking hold in the 21st century.

The post Tolerance Is The Word As Agricultural Scientists Try To Combat Climate Change appeared first on Techso Mogro.

AlphaFold came out in 2018. This machine-learning AI has been folding proteins since it first was developed. It has beaten human competitors in protein-folding contests. Since it first came on the scene it has gone through several iterations with AlphaFold 3, the latest to come out this year. In this new release, it can predict DNA and RNA protein complexes.

AlphaFold was used to model the COVID spike protein helping vaccine researchers to come up with mRNA vaccines to immunize the world. Currently, it is being used to design drugs that interact with target proteins and produce antibody therapies.

AlphaFold is being used to study proteins responsible for antibiotic resistance to fight superbugs. It is also modelling proteins associated with Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders.

AlphaFold researchers are engineering enzymes making biofuels, breaking down waste, and developing biomaterials for medical and industrial use.

Now, AI and CRISPR, the revolutionary genome editing tool are combining forces to produce proteins and bacteria that can breathe in carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), the two most potent greenhouse gasses, and exhale organic feedstocks, or produce plastics as a substitute for concrete.

How hot is this subject area? David Baker at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design is this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry because of his work in this field. The Institute has been designing and predicting protein structures that are the building blocks of life. Baker isn’t alone in marrying CRISPR and AI. Evolutionary Scale, a biotech startup has trained a large language model to help design proteins. Called ESM3, it is the first generative model to create novel proteins. Another biotech company, Profluent, has developed OpenCRISPR-1, an AI-designed gene editor that reduces off-target effects by 95% compared to traditional CRISPR methods. Off-target effects are unintended DNA modifications that can occur when using CRISPR to edit DNA and RNA. Then there is ProGen, a Salesforce AI Research spinoff that in 2020 developed an advanced language protein-building model. The current release, ProGen2, has been trained on a dataset of over 280 million protein sequences.

What will the marriage of AI and CRISPR produce? Expect to see an acceleration in the pace of genetic research as AI is used to analyze large volumes of genomic data. AI will help to identify gene functions and predict gene mutation effects. AI will generate new versions of CRISPR not found in nature creating gene editors with capabilities that go far beyond our current technology.

Where will we see the benefits of combining AI and CRISPR? For medicine, AI-enhanced CRISPR will improve diagnosis and even prevent genetic disorders. It can make medicine even more personalized by analyzing an individual’s genetic profile and suggesting treatment. It can even train the immune system to recognize and attack different cancer cells.

Outside of medicine and materials science, combining AI and CRISPR will have a big impact on agriculture. It will help improve crops to make them more flavourful and nutritious while also improving disease, insect and drought resistance. It will have a similar impact on livestock.

Ethical concerns remain in combining these two powerful technologies. There have to be guardrails to stop mad scientists from creating genetic inequalities that lead to the development of designer babies and superhumans. Remember Star Trek’s, the Wrath of Khan, and you get the picture.

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