Small but mighty, plankton are some of the most powerful creatures on Earth.
For @TheConversationUS, a marine conservationist writes: "Plankton are critical to marine ecosystems and to humans, but often glide under the radar of our interest."
"Known as the enteric nervous system, these neurons are commonly referred to as our 'second brain', but a new study from Australia suggests these neurons may actually be the very 'first brain' that our mammalian ancestors evolved."
Many years ago, on another platform, someone said that humans are digestive tracts that eventually evolved nervous systems and brains, and not the other way around.
And that has forever changed how I think about being human.
"The insect world is full of species of parasitic wasps that spend their infancy eating other insects alive. And for reasons that scientists don’t fully understand, they have repeatedly adopted and tamed wild, disease-causing viruses and turned them into biological weapons. Half a dozen examples already are described, and new research hints at many more."
Not sure, but feels like one thing about genes that is generally not popular knowledge is that it is all about interacting chemical gradients over time. So uhh if trying an analogy here… more like building sounds with a synth than blueprints of a building. Maybe someone actually expert in this has a better popularization? #genetics#biology