Money,power, and mitochondria

Can we devise ways for the ultra‐rich to put their wealth to good use?

The world’s richest individuals and their wealth have recently come under the spotlight, with all those luxury yachts apparently owned by Russian oligarchs and their political friends veering to safe havens beyond the reach of sanctions; most of them vastly surpassing in value the cost of an advanced warship or the on‐off‐on saga of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter for a sum that exceeds the annual GDP of a mid‐sized country.Even if their riches have been acquired through legal means and provide joy and sustenance to many, how can it be justified that a small number of individuals own such vast assets, when a substantial fraction of the world’s population still lives in abject misery without even the benefit of adequate food and clean water?At this time, molecular biologists have yet to join the ranks of the ultra‐rich. But there is no reason to suppose that being a molecular biologist somehow insulates us from the greed and megalomania that seems to infect those who become billionaires on the back of their inventions and investments. The most likely playgrounds in which a hypothetical molecular biologist might acquire such riches are in biotech and via the pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma already enjoys low public esteem—in my view somewhat unfairly because its critics rarely take into account the real cost of R&D required to develop new drugs. But it is an easy target nonetheless, not least because of its scale, which inflates the bottom line of balance sheets in ways not easily justified in the eyes of “Joe Public”. Not to mention the many drugs that allegedly do not really work. In the public mind, we are already allied with corporate greed. It is not hard to see how this could become a reality.Those who have accumulated extreme wealth in other sectors, and accrued power and influence to go with it, are viewed unfavorably by most people, even if some super‐rich individuals are admired for their creativity (Walker et al, 2021). Obscene wealth is still considered obscene, even if some of it is invested in scientific research, in the alleviation of human suffering, or in sponsorship of the arts. The fact that the ultra‐rich are able to do so seems to many like a usurpation of what is rightfully the responsibility of government, especially in democratic countries, and what do the wealthiest actually spend their money on anyway? Even if some of it is given away to charity, it is at the arbitrary whim of one or a few individuals, and not a transparent process with public accountability. Surely, it would be far better if they were all subject to a global wealth tax, the proceeds of which might support the UN, whose current annual budget (about US$ 3 billion) is mere pocket money for the world’s wealthiest persons.But how could such a scheme actually work? Although the widespread sanctioning of those who supposedly bankroll the Kremlin seems to have had some effect, the ultra‐rich invariably devise ways of circumventing legal obstacles thrown in their path. There is a widespread suspicion that economic sanctions ultimately punish ordinary people rather than wayward decision‐makers or their wealthy friends. High taxes promote tax avoidance and tax havens. Strict regulations to prevent money laundering just fuel the rise of cryptocurrencies. Laws beget loopholes.Global legislation with global implementation may look like an attractive tool, but its track record is not impressive. Consider the Kyoto/Paris process on climate change, for example, or the proposal for a 15% minimum corporate tax rate worldwide. Its effects are likely to be blunted by the floor effectively becoming the ceiling, so that most or all corporations could end up paying less and not more in taxes.What about self‐regulation? Suppose EMBO made a rule that required any individual member to donate wealth accrued from molecular biology inventions above some threshold to charitable causes or be kicked out of the organization? Would such a person care? And if EMBO had any real power to frustrate their activities, would they not just be tempted to set up a rival organization where they would be free to continue their work without such restrictions?To limit the wealth and power of individuals made rich by the capitalist market economy in which we all live, I think there is only one viable tool at our disposal, namely, the capitalist market economy itself. If we collectively boycott the products and services of companies owned by the very rich, unless they donate the bulk of their wealth to good causes of which we approve, we could eventually shift the balance in favour of better practices.It may seem a pathetically inadequate tool and would certainly require a lot of time and effort. But in the long run, it could work. There is, for example, a growing movement to use market mechanisms to support ethical and environmentally sustainable businesses. Successful companies have adopted such advocacy in their own marketing, even if it sometimes seems a cynical ploy. They would not do so unless there is public demand. All we need is to add the accumulation of obscene wealth by company owners or majority shareholders as another abuse of the system that can potentially be reined in by consumer pressure. All it would take is for concerned individuals to devise a code of practice that could be used to judge compliance.Oh well, maybe in the end, I should just take comfort in the fact that all the power of the ultra‐rich stems ultimately from mitochondria.     

Virus Entry, Assembly, Budding, and Membrane Rafts

As intracellular parasites, viruses rely heavily on the use of numerous cellular machineries for completion of their replication cycle. The recent discovery of the heterogeneous distribution of the various lipids within cell membranes has led to the proposal that sphingolipids and cholesterol tend to segregate in microdomains called membrane rafts. The involvement of membrane rafts in biosynthetic traffic, signal transduction, and endocytosis has suggested that viruses may also take advantage of rafts for completion of some steps of their replication cycle, such as entry into their cell host, assembly, and budding. In this review, we have attempted to delineate all the reliable data sustaining this hypothesis and to build some models of how rafts are used as platforms for assembly of some viruses. Indeed, if in many cases a formal proof of raft involvement in a virus replication cycle is still lacking, one can reasonably suggest that, owing to their ability to specifically attract some proteins, lipid microdomains provide a particular milieu suitable for increasing the efficiency of many protein-protein interactions which are crucial for virus infection and growth.     

Insulators, long-range interactions, and genome function

Insulators are DNA-protein complexes that can mediate interactions in cis or trans between different regions of the genome. Although originally defined on the basis of their ability to block enhancer-promoter communication or to serve as barriers against the spreading of heterochromatin in reporter systems, recent information suggests that their function is more nuanced and depends on the nature of the sequences brought together by contacts between specific insulator sites. Here we provide an overview of new evidence that has uncovered a wide range of functions for these sequences in addition to their two classical roles.     

Adult mesenchymal stem cells: characterization, differentiation, and application in cell and gene therapy

A considerable amount of retrospective data is available that describes putative mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). However, there is still very little knowledge available that documents the properties of a MSC in its native environment. Although the precise identity of MSCs remains a challenge, further understanding of their biological properties will be greatly advanced by analyzing the mechanisms that govern their self-renewal and differentiation potential. This review begins with the current state of knowledge on the biology of MSCs, specifically with respect to their existence in the adult organism and postulation of their biological niche. While MSCs are considered suitable candidates for cell-based strategies owing to their intrinsic capacity to self-renew and differentiate, there is currently little information available regarding the molecular mechanisms that govern their stem cell potential. We propose here a model for the regulation of MSC differentiation, and recent findings regarding the regulation of MSC differentiation are discussed. Current research efforts focused on elucidating the mechanisms regulating MSC differentiation should facilitate the design of optimal in vitro culture conditions to enhance their clinical utility cell and gene therapy.     

Social networks,support cliques,and kinship

Data on the number of adults that an individual contacts at least once a month in a set of British populations yield estimates of network sizes that correspond closely to those of the typical “sympathy group” size in humans. Men and women do not differ in their total network size, but women have more females and more kin in their networks than men do. Kin account for a significantly higher proportion of network members than would be expected by chance. The number of kin in the network increases in proportion to the size of the family; as a result, people from large families have proportionately fewer non-kin in their networks, suggesting that there is either a time constraint or a cognitive constraint on network size. A small inner clique of the network functions as a support group from whom an individual is particularly likely to seek advice or assistance in time of need. Kin do not account for a significantly higher proportion of the support clique than they do for the wider network of regular social contacts for either men or women, but each sex exhibits a strong preference for members of their own sex.     

Virus entry, assembly, budding, and membrane rafts.

As intracellular parasites, viruses rely heavily on the use of numerous cellular machineries for completion of their replication cycle. The recent discovery of the heterogeneous distribution of the various lipids within cell membranes has led to the proposal that sphingolipids and cholesterol tend to segregate in microdomains called membrane rafts. The involvement of membrane rafts in biosynthetic traffic, signal transduction, and endocytosis has suggested that viruses may also take advantage of rafts for completion of some steps of their replication cycle, such as entry into their cell host, assembly, and budding. In this review, we have attempted to delineate all the reliable data sustaining this hypothesis and to build some models of how rafts are used as platforms for assembly of some viruses. Indeed, if in many cases a formal proof of raft involvement in a virus replication cycle is still lacking, one can reasonably suggest that, owing to their ability to specifically attract some proteins, lipid microdomains provide a particular milieu suitable for increasing the efficiency of many protein-protein interactions which are crucial for virus infection and growth.     

Causal reasoning,causal probabilities,and conceptions of causation

The present paper deals with the tools that can be used to represent causation and to reason about it and, specifically, with their diversity. It focuses on so-called “causal probabilities”—that is, probabilities of effects given one of their causes—and critically surveys a recent paper in which Joyce (2010) argues that the values of these probabilities do not depend on one’s conception of causation. I first establish a stronger independence claim: I show that the very definition of causal probabilities is independent of one’s conception of causation. Second, I investigate whether causal probabilities indeed take the same values under their different possible definitions.     

Life,information theory,and topology

The information content of an organism determines to a large extent its ability to perform the basic vital functions: selection of food, breaking up of the food molecules into appropriate parts, selection of those parts, and their assimilation. The information content needed is very large and requires a sufficiently large complexity of the organism. The information content of an organism is largely determined by the information content of the constituent organic molecules. The information content of the latter is in its turn determined by the number of physically distinguishable atoms or radicals of which the molecule is composed. The different arrangements of atoms in a molecule are represented by the structural formula, which is basically a graph. It is shown that the topology of this graph also determines to a large extent the information content. Different points of a graph may be physically indistinguishable; in general, however, they are different in regard to their topological properties. A study of the relations between the topological properties of graphs and their information content is suggested, and several theorems are demonstrated. A relation between topology and living processes is thus found also on the molecular level.     

Transmission,relatedness, and the evolution of cooperative symbionts

Cooperative interactions between species, termed mutualisms, play a key role in shaping natural ecosystems, economically important agricultural systems, and in influencing human health. Across different mutualisms, there is significant variation in the benefit that hosts receive from their symbionts. Empirical data suggest that transmission mode can help explain this variation: vertical transmission, where symbionts infect their host's offspring, leads to symbionts that provide greater benefits to their hosts than horizontal transmission, where symbionts leave their host and infect other hosts in the population. However, two different theoretical explanations have been given for this pattern: firstly, vertical transmission aligns the fitness interests of hosts and their symbionts; secondly, vertical transmission leads to increased relatedness between symbionts sharing a host, favouring cooperation between symbionts. We used a combination of analytical models and dynamic simulations to tease these factors apart, in order to compare their separate influences and see how they interact. We found that relatedness between symbionts sharing a host, rather than transmission mode per se, was the most important factor driving symbiont cooperation. Transmission mode mattered mainly because it determined relatedness. We also found evolutionary branching throughout much of our simulation, suggesting that a combination of transmission mode and multiplicity of infections could lead to the stable coexistence of different symbiont strategies.     

Design, Development and Decisions

Evolutionary ideas and modern biological knowledge have important roles to play in the understanding of human behaviour. Nevertheless, it is deeply misleading to regard humans as robots in the grip of their genes. A well designed brain should respond to the consequences of behaviour; if an understanding of the likely consequences can be achieved without actually performing the act, then a person who knows that they will be rewarded or punished for certain acts is bound to be influenced by that knowledge. A brain designed in that way facilitates the evolution of societies with explicit social approval of certain activities and explicit disapproval of others. The evolutionary approach to psychology does not imply that individuals do not make free choices. Individuals clearly do make a big difference to what happens in their lives through their decisions. They may be surprised by the consequences of their own actions. A well designed brain should be able to anticipate the consequences of various courses of action and choose between them on the basis of their likely costs and benefits. Planning before doing is clearly of great advantage. People do make well considered decisions and they benefit from doing so.     

Hawks, doves, and mixed-symmetry games

The hawk-dove game has proved to be an important tool for understanding the role of aggression in social interactions. Here, the game is presented in a more general form (GHD) to facilitate analyses of interactions between individuals that may differ in "size", where size is interpreted as a surrogate for resource holding power. Three different situations are considered, based on the availability and use of information that interacting individuals have about their sizes: the classical symmetric case, in which no information about sizes is used, the asymmetric case, in which the individuals know their relative sizes and thus their chances of prevailing in combat, and a mixed-symmetry case, in which each individual only knows its own size (or only knows its opponent's size). I describe and use some recently developed methods for multitype games-evolutionary games involving two or more categories of players. With these methods and others, the evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) that emerge for the three different cases are identified and compared. A proof of the form and uniqueness of the ESS for the mixed-symmetry case is presented. In this situation, one size category at most can play a mixed strategy; larger individuals are aggressive and smaller individuals are not. As the number of size categories approaches infinity and the size distribution becomes continuous, there is a threshold size, above which all individuals are aggressive, and below which they are not.     

Earth, sky, wind, and weather

This paper seeks to understand what it means to live 'in the open'. It begins with an account of experiments that test whether children have acquired a scientifically correct understanding of the shape of the earth, according to which people live all around on the outside of a solid sphere. This understanding cannot accommodate the phenomenon of the sky, in relation to which the earth can appear only as the ground of human habitation. James Gibson's ecological approach to perception offers a possible alternative, depicting earth and sky as complementary hemispheres. Yet for Gibson, this earth-sky can be inhabited only insofar as it is furnished with objects. To that extent, it ceases to be open. Drawing on elements of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, it is argued that in the open world persons and things relate not as closed forms but by virtue of their common immersion in the generative fluxes of the medium – in wind and weather. Fundamental to life is the process of respiration, by which organisms continually disrupt any boundary between earth and sky, binding substance and medium together in forging their own growth and movement. Thus to inhabit the open is not to be stranded on the outer surface of the earth but to be caught up in the transformations of the weather-world.     

Niche construction,adaptive preferences,and the differences between fitness and utility

A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible.     

Posture,microclimate, and thermoregulation in yellow baboons

This report describes thermoregulatory behavior of free-ranging yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) in Amboseli, Kenya. While resting in trees during early morning hours, baboons are directly exposed to thermal effects of wind and sun. We hypothesized that these animals would respond to microclimatic changes by altering their posture and body orientatio so as to minimize thermal stress. The results of this study indicate that air temperature, solar radiation, and wind velocity interact in their effect on behavior as predicted by this hypothesis. Specifically, the most salient cue for trunk orientation choice is wind direction, while posture is primarily influenced by air temperature. In sum, our results clearly demonstrate that when baboons are unable to minimize thermal stress by selecting a more favorable microenvironment, they do so by altering their posture.     

Student Perceptions of,and Attitudes toward,Bats in Barak Valley,Assam, India

Bats are commonly found all over the world and provide significant ecosystem services. These animals are facing serious threats due to various anthropogenic activities, including hunting. Additionally, bats are often not particularly well liked due to their non-aesthetic characteristics. A positive attitude to these animals is essential to protect them through appropriate conservation measures involving public intervention. Current high school students are the conservationists of the future, and the extent of support for bat conservation received from this and future generations is dependent upon their attitude toward these animals. It is therefore important to assess their perceptions of bats so that appropriate awareness programs can be devised, and negative attitudes (if any) rectified. The present study aimed to understand this aspect in order to provide inputs for shaping positive attitudes toward bat conservation. The study was undertaken in Barak Valley, Assam, India, where 65 bat colonies had already been recorded. A total of 3,059 high school students from 36 schools situated in their vicinity were questioned using a close-ended questionnaire to determine their perceptions. The responses received were divided among three categories: familiarity with bats, opinion on bats, and attitudes toward conservation, and were ranked on a scale of 10, based on selected aspects. Most students were awarded a score of four, indicating an average knowledge and opinion of bats. These findings suggest that awareness programs are urgently needed in schools to improve the general knowledge of and attitudes toward bats, and to inspire the next generation of bat conservationists.     

Bias,Discrimination, and Obesity

This article reviews information on discriminatory attitudes and behaviors against obese individuals, integrates this to show whether systematic discrimination occurs and why, and discusses needed work in the field. Clear and consistent stigmatization, and in some cases discrimination, can be documented in three important areas of living: employment, education, and health care. Among the findings are that 28% of teachers in one study said that becoming obese is the worst thing that can happen to a person; 24% of nurses said that they are “repulsed” by obese persons; and, controlling for income and grades, parents provide less college support for their overweight than for their thin children. There are also suggestions but not yet documentation of discrimination occurring in adoption proceedings, jury selection, housing, and other areas. Given the vast numbers of people potentially affected, it is important to consider the research‐related, educational, and social policy implications of these findings.     

Greater goods: ethics,energy, and other-than-human speech

Renewable energy projects are ethically laudable for their cleansing intentions, but they also produce effects upon other-than-human beings in their orbit. Taking the case of Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is home to the densest concentration of on-shore wind parks anywhere in the world, and following Foucault's reading of the speech form ‘parrhesia’, this essay argues that the bodies of affected nonhuman beings, particularly those whose existence is actively balanced against a ‘greater good’ for humanity, enact a form of other-than-human speech, first in their threatened status and, secondly, through environmental management regimes that seek to synchronize human and nonhuman lives in settings of both local and global ecological failures.     

Bioethics, vulnerability, and protection

What makes individuals, groups, or even entire countries vulnerable? And why is vulnerability a concern in bioethics? A simple answer to both questions is that vulnerable individuals and groups are subject to exploitation, and exploitation is morally wrong. This analysis is limited to two areas. First is the context of multinational research, in which vulnerable people can be exploited even if they are not harmed, and harmed even if they are not exploited. The type of multinational research likely to raise the most ethical concerns is that in which the investigators or sponsors are from a powerful industrialised country or a giant pharmaceutical company and the research is conducted in a developing country. Second is the situation of women, who are made vulnerable in cultural settings or in entire countries in which they are oppressed and powerless. In the face of cultural values and practices, or governmental policies, these women suffer serious consequences for their health and even lives. Examples are provided, and it is suggested that in some cases vulnerable individuals can be harmed but not exploited. On the positive side, recent developments reveal a new awareness of exploitation and efforts to enhance the ability of developing countries to protect themselves and their citizens from exploitation at the hands of powerful sponsors of research. In addition, human rights principles are increasingly being used to monitor the actions (or inaction) of governments regarding women's reproductive rights and vulnerability with respect to HIV/AIDS, and to take remedial actions.     

Probing,Assessment, and Management during Interactions between Ground Squirrels and Rattlesnakes

The predator-prey relationship between California ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) and northern Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis) is a useful system for exploring conflict and assessment. Rattlesnakes are major predators of ground squirrel pups, but pose a less significant threat to adult squirrels. Adults approach, harass, and even attack rattlesnakes in defense of their pups. Two factors that may influence risk to both squirrel and snake during encounters are the size and body temperature of the rattlesnake. We used high-speed video to analyze the strikes of rattlesnakes of various sizes tested at different body temperatures. Results indicate that warmer snakes are more dangerous because they strike with higher velocity, greater accuracy, and less hesitation. Similarly, larger snakes are more dangerous because they can strike farther and at higher speeds, and keep their fangs embedded longer. Thus, ground squirrels would benefit from extracting information about a rattlesnake's size and temperature. The converse of our results is that cooler, smaller rattlesnakes may be more vulnerable. These snakes could mitigate their risk by avoiding dangerous adversaries and minimizing cues that divulge their weaknesses. Such tactics might explain the active probing that squirrels direct at rattlesnakes, which may function to overcome a snake's resistance to disclosing its vulnerability.