Was Sleep Inherited from Sponges? A Case for the Sleep Gene

Searching the internet, I was surprised to find that a solid case for the "sleep gene" hasn't yet been made.  Surely something as universal as sleep should be embedded in our genes somewhere.  A few months ago, researchers at the University of Tsukuba were able to isolate some genes in mice that are thought to be responsible for sleep.  The question becomes: since we evolved from rodents, might we also have sleep genes among the many sequences of our genome that haven't been examined yet?  The answer is probably yes. 

The reason we sleep might have to do with the genes we inherited from immobile organisms eons ago.  It's generally agreed that we evolved from fishes, that fishes evolved from flatworms, and that flatworms evolved from sponges.  Our ability to sleep may be genetically linked to these immobile sponges, which were among the first multi-cellular organisms that couldn't move.  Lifeforms that were even more primitive, such as the bacteria they evolved from, aren't known to have had the ability to sleep, suggesting that it's a phenomenon only associated with the animal kingdom. 

The ability of the first animals to move came as a result of convergence, which is a re-attainment of the genetic ability that a prior species on its genome had, activated after eons of dormancy.  In this case, the flatworms that evolved from sponges would have converged with the bacteria they'd evolved from, since bacteria was the only thing on its genome that could move on its own.  Furthermore, the fact that bacteria and other single-cell organisms don't sleep (or even rest) suggests that a metabolic change was imminent once the first immobile multi-cellular creatures came into existence. 

The ability for animals to sleep may also be convergent.  The part of the genome we inherited from sponges may have forced us to regain the metabolism necessary in order to perform functions our bodies couldn't do when awake, such as a resetting of the immune system and repairing tissue.  Our bodies would have learned these critical functions using the part of the genome that correlates with a lower sponge metabolism. 

Let's be clear though: sponges as we know them today don't sleep.  You need a nervous system in order to do that.  What's suggested here isn't an actual inheritance, but more of a way for animals to retain the benefits of a slow metabolism by using sleep as a model for immobility.  Regardless, there may have been a transition species of sponge that was able to sleep- a species that strongly resembled the worm it would evolve into.  Such a species of sponge in time would have had to develop a nervous system.  Where you draw the line between sponge and worm doesn't matter; in order to retain its balance, the worm had to rest the way its predecessor had. 

While worms also don't sleep the way we do, they certainly go through periods of rest, as do any other animal species that evolved from them, including arthropods.  The fact that virtually the entire animal kingdom performs some form of sleep means that it must have been inherited from a common ancestor.  That ancestor could only have been our friends from the deep, who rested on the ocean floor long before the first flatworms reared their tiny heads.  If it weren't for the sponge, our bodies might not have this otherwise magical ability to recharge itself during a nice, deep sleep. 

 

The Purpose of Evolution

It may be that the primary purpose of evolution is for universal consciousness to rediscover itself.  At the beginning of time all the elements and forces were united, making it unnecessary for life to arise as a means of survival.  When the Big Bang broke everything apart, it was like a painful rip that severed the body that a universal consciousness might have possessed.  Whether it did this on its own or was caused an outside force cannot be known at the present time.  What can be known, or at least theorized by a consensus of scientific individuals, is that life first arose naturally, and that the only way it could sustain itself was by reproducing what it already was.  Each reproduction thenceforth became a new and improved version of the one previous to it, and all living creatures that descended from this primary form of life used its blueprints to build better designs for themselves.  Many plants and animals living today have the most advanced body plans that the planet has ever produced, including us.  The question becomes:  How much more can we evolve, and to what end does evolution follow the course of nature and finish what it sought to create? 

It never ends, you might say.  Evolution may be designing a never-ending sequence of mutations that are outside the parameters of time.  However, on Earth it certainly had a beginning, and if we apply the belief that anything that has a beginning must also have an end, no matter how distant in the future it is, then we must deduce that evolution will come to an end as well.  This doesn't necessarily have to be from the result of a global cataclysm, for evolution may not even be restricted to our planet.  Rather, if it all started on some distant planet farther in the past than we imagined, it could also end sometime in the far future on an even more distant planet that wasn't even the originator.  Or several planets.  Or all the planets known to harbor life... For what higher attainment could life possibly achieve than becoming cosmically conscious about everything that ever was, just as it was in the turbulent singularity from which it used to be aware of itself?  Life is always striving to better itself; to build on revolutionary qualities and refine them into improved ones.  In a dog-eat-dog universe where the fittest reign supreme, the most technologically advanced species, on whatever planet it is they inhabit, may ultimately spread their influence to the farthest reaches of space through means we can't possibly fathom yet. 

Think of how far evolution has advanced on our planet alone.  It has always allowed life to break through barriers and expand to new territories, from microbes infiltrating cells and becoming functional parts of them to the predecessors of whales who returned to the sea after roaming the land for eons.  A species as advanced as an interstellar one would in theory be able to spread its genetic code to every single planet that supports life, making it possible for ever more complex mutations, to the extent that it ultimately reaches universal status.  A universal melting pot would result, much like the one caused by mass immigration to a country like the United States (which incidentally helped make us one of the strongest in the world).  While we are the first species on our planet to globalize using technology, another may have already beaten us to "globalizing" solar systems, galaxies, and even clusters of galaxies.  A species as advanced as this may even transcend the laws of what a species can do.  At this point I leave it up to the imagination to decide what can happen. 

Alas, there is that surprisingly large segment of the biological sciences community that would argue that evolution isn't progressive at all; that it merely gives the appearance of progressing when it's really more directional than anything.  Apparently calling the ability of a species to improve itself in a changing environment “progress” is more of a subjective judgment to them, though I have a hard time seeing how.  It's true that a deteriorating environment would complicate any notion of progress, forcing species to regress in order to survive, but in the grand scheme of things the planet has become less unstable through its long history, granting the vast majority of its evolutionary trends as being progressive instead of regressive.  Matt Ridley, author of Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, goes so far as to say: 

 

"Evolution has no pinnacle and there is no such thing as evolutionary progress.  Natural selection is simply the process by which life-forms change to suit the myriad opportunities afforded by the physical environment and other life-forms." 
 

I don’t accept the idea that evolution, a word which by its own definition means progress, isn't a phenomenon that strives to increase the complexity of life-forms.  How can anyone say this when it gave us the most complex organ we've ever known: the human brain?  Without evolutionary progress, the ones saying this wouldn't even have the power cogitate such a thought.  Bacteria ruled the planet for 3 billion years before larger, more complex life-forms took center stage.  Calling bacteria more successful simply because it's been here longer is like saying the first computer ever invented is more important than the internet.  While we owe a tremendous debt to our microscopic ancestors for paving the way to multi-cellular life, you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone who isn't a scientist that they are evolving at a better rate than we are.  Leave it to the scientists to overthink something so basic. 

 

Liquid Jet in Earth's Core

    A liquid-molten jet stream has been discovered in the Earth's outer core.  Like upper-atmosphere jet streams, this "iron stream" is likely affected by convection cells on either side of it.  It means there may be more to core dynamics than meets the eye.  Geologists are theorizing that when this jet weakens, so does the Earth's magnetic field.  And during a pole shift, the jet switches directions. 
    I'd be interested to know how similar this jet stream is to the magnetic flux tubes that regulate solar cycles.  The sun has such an elastic structure that it allows these flux tubes to reach the surface all the way from its core, providing the solar system with a very large magnetic field.  These flux tubes are thought to be made of plasma and not molten iron, but their purpose is similar- they generate magnetic fields from strong moving currents the same way this jet stream does.  Perhaps all the planets have inferior versions of this solar dynamo, or used it as a blueprint for their own "survival".

Algorithm Flush

 The age of the Internet has increased the potential for expanding our minds, yet very few of us are actually doing it.  One reason is because the algorithms of social media have significantly narrowed our viewpoint.  Every time we like something, share it with our friends, or even click on an article, the tracking systems of major platforms like Facebook and Google filter out anything that isn't related to it.  For the first time in history, we are controlling the source of our own propaganda, simply by choosing what we like as it befits our biased views.  We've become the agents of our own narrow viewpoint, only receiving the news stories that these algorithms deem worthy of our time. 

By using these platforms, it's like our emotions are selecting facts to read for us.  The algorithms they use snowball biased information that only serve to arouse our feelings.  They fish out the news stories that are more likely to bring us anger or joy, because the more emotional we feel about a story, the more likely we are to share it, thereby increasing their traffic.  It's become a far more personal method of staying in touch with the world than the one of traditional reporting in the past. 

Speaking for myself, just because I click on an article doesn't mean I want to read every article of the same nature, nor does it mean I want to buy the same things or see the same people at the top of my news feed.  I want to read every article that a news organization provides, not just the ones that are trending.  And I don't want stories from only one news organization, but several.  News stories should always be strengthened by a variety of outside opinions, otherwise any source you read from gets confined to the outlook of the social group it writes stories for.  It's important to remember that news is an industry, and its customers are so divided among demographics, regions, and ideologies that any organization would be better off financially if it only catered to one social group rather than all of them.  When we only read one news source, we run the risk of seeing the world through the eyes of a restricted viewpoint, rather than in its totality. 

The new algorithms also apply to advertising.  Now advertisers aren't simply putting their ads in the papers, but relying on similar algorithms that decide which ones will be seen by the most people.  The ads reinforce our narrow worldview by only supplying ones that are based on past views, conveniently blocking out anything new that comes along which might dissuade us from our next purchase.  This benefits the platform as much as it does the advertisers, because if the platform isn't supplying its advertisers with referrals, then their money is being wasted. 

Expanding our worldview means abandoning sites like Facebook as a news platform and being open minded to news sources that don't feed off the emotional reactions of their readers.  Media bias is inevitable; we just have to be more selective in reading stories that are clearly designed to aggravate people.  One way to remedy this is by looking at some of the extremist reporting on the other side of whichever ideology we identify with.  That way we can better see how they are really reflections of the sources we use ourselves.  Liberals should have a look at Fox News from time to time, just to gather a sense of how ludicrous their own news sources can look to conservatives.  Likewise, people who watch Fox News would be wise to see what sources like MSNBC and Huffington Post are reporting, so they realize how biased their own sources are.  Both sides need to be paying more attention to the alt-right, the platform that got Donald Trump elected (namely Breitbart news), whereas their readers should be looking for news sources that aren't meant to arouse populist indignation.  I have never seen a platform that's done more to rally its readers than Breibart; it's almost like a tabloid with its "shocking" headlines printed in big and bold fonts. 

I'm writing this with the hope that we can better understand our political adversaries, as opposed to ignoring them or lashing out.  It would bring us closer together and not divide our country even further than it already has.  Only by expanding our worldview will we be able to think for ourselves.  We must flush out all the sensationalism used by extremist newspapers and the stories that social media algorithms use to keep us addicted with.  No matter what our emotional reaction to a story is, we must remain calm and remember that the world isn't falling apart because of one political party.  Putting the blame on a single ideology only weakens the state by distancing them from us.  We must be conscious that the media is trying to aggravate people so that their stories will reach the most amount of people and generate more ads for the social groups who subscribe to them.  Don't be a victim of all this fear-mongering agitprop; think for yourself, read from a variety of sources, flush em' out! 

Increase in Helium Detected Near Epicenters

 Phys.org published an article about a groundbreaking Japanese study that suggests an increase in groundwater helium levels mean an earthquake is imminent.  While this is only a preliminary study it could lead to more research that verifies it as factual.  If it does prove to be true, then I would wonder if animals can sense this helium shift after drinking water. 

Thousands of people have been known to report their pets acting strangely in the days leading up to an earthquake.  If these animals are drinking from natural groundwater, they may be better able to detect the helium shift, thereby anticipating the coming of an earthquake from past experience.  The article states that the shift is stronger in areas closer to epicenters, so if more reports are coming in about strange animal behavior near them, there may be a correlation.  Hopefully any future studies will include this hypothesis. 

This is tremendous news for the field of seismology.  In the future, they may be able to predict earthquakes by using helium sensors in local groundwater and monitoring any sudden changes.  They'd be able to do this by generating maps of helium content all over a country (like Japan) the same way something like radar finds rain on a weather map, i.e., remote sensing.  If a large portion of helium is concentrated in a localized area, they could forecast it as being the epicenter of a possible earthquake.  Technology like this would save companies billions of dollars in damage control, not to mention the countless lives that could be spared. 

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

If the results of the 2016 election are any indication, racism is still a relevant issue in our country. Though few will admit it, having a black president in the White House horrified many people for a very superficial reason: the simple fact that he was black. For this reason, I decided to pick up Ta-Nehisi Coates' modern classic, Between the World and Me, just to get a sense of the mindset of black America in post-segregation society. 

Written as a series of letters to his son, Coates provides a wonderfully written catalog of experiences that highlight his fight for social justice as a student and journalist. Wisely he avoids crossing the thin line between whiney and provocative. His insights show few traces of anger and serve more as a beacon for hope against police brutality, incarceration, and any reversions to pre-1960s social norms. He uses the American Dream as a platform for white suburbia's rejection of the slums, using references to the black body to prove his point. The black body has been beaten black and blue in white America's efforts to keep segregation a reality, despite all the civil rights laws that were passed to try and eradicate it. 

He is spot on. I grew up in the suburbs, and only one black kid went to our school. Any notion that our races have been united is an illusion. Though we may be slightly more tolerant, the laws haven't done enough to erase the memory of our bleak past. We are reaching a dangerous point in American history, similar to the time when Rome feasted so much on its glory that it reverted to vilifying social groups as scapegoats for its inner turmoil. We should know better than that, but we clearly don't. 

Wind, Sand, and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    This is a really great memoire-anthology on Saint-Exupery's experiences as a pilot. They aren't plain experiences either; he flew through a storm over the Andes, and nearly died of starvation after crashing his plane into the Sahara Desert. Not only that, but he spices up his memories with a lot of reflective thoughts on the condition of man, which are often poetically pleasing. These are all things I enjoy when reading, and in addition to my interest in flying it seemed the perfect combination of style, atmosphere, and subject matter. I'm glad I chose to read it on my flight to Europe; it's the perfect book to read on a plane. 

Genesis Redux: Cells, Planets, and More Evidence of God

The cell is the most basic form of life we know about.   Like us it exchanges gases, not through a mouth but through a membrane.  It also maintains a homeostasis through its internal reactions, like all living creatures.   The conditions of life, as defined by biologists, are such that an organism must be capable of responsiveness, growth, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction.  A cell meets all of these requirements; it grows, reproduces, and dies, the way you would expect anything living to do.  Does it surprise you that something so small, so seemingly detached from the larger world, and so different from other forms of life, could be considered an organism? 
    When Robert Hooke first discovered them in 1665, he didn't think they were alive because he wasn't able to observe their interior contents.  On the surface, a cell is a stationery object that doesn't appear to have any internal chemistry at all.  Hooke suggested that these microscopic objects he'd discovered came about because of spontaneous generation, from either natural or artificial heat.  It wasn't until Anton van Leeuwenhoek's discovery in 1676 that the composition of a cell had a high amount of motility that the cell was interpreted as a life-form for the first time.  After that, it took about 100 years for us to realize that cells were the building blocks of life. 
    The discovery of the cell started a biological revolution in science.  Prior to the discovery, nobody had thought that our bodies were composed of an astronomically large amount of living organisms.  The finding of bacteria came later, and insights into the nature of organs were expanded upon.  The idea that organs such as the brain, liver, and kidney, were made of unique types of different cells- that all worked together to keep a larger organism functioning- never really inspired the kind of mass-mystical enlightenment it should have, in the opinion of this writer.  It should have been considered divinely miraculous that our bodies were found to be so intricately designed by a network of species invisible to the naked eye.  I'm at a loss to explain why it wasn't. 
 
    It's now time to share with you what I always suspected: that the earth is a living, breathing organism.  I realize that this may come as a surprise to you; it came as a shock to me when I first conceived it.  It may seem especially presumptuous coming from a man who isn't a specialist in biological sciences, but I can assure you that I have thought this through to the core (no pun intended) and found that indeed, the ground we walk on is but the surface of a much larger organism, our ever-self-sufficient planet Earth. 

        
First, I shall use a couple analogies to illustrate my point. Like the microscopic dust mites that walk over our bodies searching for food, we are scavenging the body of something bigger than ourselves for food of our own, completely oblivious to the fact that it is a living organism.  An even smaller organism that isn't aware of serving a larger body is the cell itself, which compares much better to the Earth when we consider their shapes and asymmetrical properties.  Most animals are symmetric in design, but not our spherical building blocks.  It comes as a special surprise that we may in turn provide some of the building blocks of our own planet, the same way cells do to our bodies.  The body we provide chemical balance to is the Earth, a spherical object, while our bodies rely on the chemical balance of spherical bodies themselves. And considering fractals, the planets and stars could be likened to cells inside a universal body, one that may be symmetrically shaped like our own.  There lies another proof of God; that if the definition of life is skewed to allow planetary and stellar objects to be considered life-forms, they would all resemble the cells in some universal being. 
    As mentioned, the standard definition of life states that it must have a metabolism, it must reproduce, it must have the ability to grow, it must adapt to changing conditions, and it must respond to stimuli.  Never mind the fact that such a rigid definition discounts viruses, proteins, and a lot of other things that self-regulate.  Our new definition must require only a number of these things and not all five.  I also want to dismiss the Gaia Hypothesis on the grounds that it has mostly been thought of as a metaphorical model for the Earth being a symbiotic entity, where every living thing depends on everything else that's living.  For I firmly believe that the Earth doesn't care whether we are alive or not.  Though it depends on us for certain characteristics, it would exist on its own without our meddling, just as other planets do.  All we do is give it some extra substance, making it more evolved than other planets.  If planets are communicating with each other via magnetism, entanglement, the "music of the spheres" or any other such barely detectable phenomenon, Earth might be proud to boast of being the only one that supports life in its neighborhood. 
    You might be interested in my post on Protein Interaction Theory, which likens proteins to being alive because they fit several of the criteria for the definition of life.  The same issue here is at hand: our planet fits several of the criteria as well, and I will be using a cell as a model of comparison.  Like a cell, the internal chemistry of the Earth goes through cycles of imbalance to regulate homeostasis.  Trapping charged particles from the sun can be likened to osmosis, or eating.  In this fashion the Earth acts as a giant capacitor, storing charge in the ionosphere and filtering it into the ground via the lightning of cumulonimbus clouds.  The very action of a thunderstorm may be described as the Earth "swallowing" food, giving it an extra supply of ions for each atom that escapes the atmosphere.  Another key process lies in the magnetosphere generated by the liquid outer core, which allows the Earth to block excessive amounts of solar radiation that would otherwise harm it.  Yes, the Earth has devised its own way of defending itself, like many planets have.  The outer core can be compared to a nuclear membrane in that it sends out massive amounts of energy to the mantle (or in a cell's case- all the organelles in its cytoplasm).  Admittedly, we don't yet know enough about the inner core to be able to compare it with the nucleus of a cell.  There surely aren't proteins and long strands of DNA swirling through the inner core of the Earth, however if we consider that two thirds of the amount of all carbon on the planet is roasting inside it in some form, the possibility of it spelling a form of life we aren't aware of becomes far more interesting.  Perhaps the mechanism of the core operates far differently from the other domains of life as we know them. 
    In order to see this comparison more clearly, you will have to try imagining all Earth processes sped up to the point where they relatively coincide with life processes in our own bodies, the processes that define what makes us alive. If we speed up all Earth processes, we notice they have an uncanny resemblance to reactions taking place inside a cell, from the convection cells in the mantle to the spewing of lava at the surface. Seeing as these processes can take up to millions of years, it isn't all that far-fetched when you eliminate time parameters.  A side-by-side viewing of the cell vs. The Earth scaled to the same time frequency would yield interesting similarities.  
    In evolutionary terms, the Earth would come before the cell as being the first monophyletic entity. (And if we describe the sun as being alive then the Earth clearly evolved from it, deeming stars the first monophyletic entity instead.)  Evolution doesn't necessarily need to go from small to large, as we've seen through its long history on Earth.  Plenty of new bacterium have arisen as a result of larger beings coming into existence.  Even new phyla of bacteria owe their existence to larger beings, like Chlamydiae, which attacks eukaryotic cells.  This begs the question: is life on Earth a disease?  Has the Earth constantly been trying to get rid of us through its long history?  Are we nothing but parasites?  Probably not.  Carbon dioxide and oxygen aren't necessary for the Earth's existence, but they do enhance its appearance.  Depending on taste, one wonders if other planets, which arguably have consciousness like everything else, look at the Earth as either being polluted beyond repair or astoundingly beautiful. 
    Another thing to consider is the tendency that larger life lives longer than smaller life.  Whales, elephants, and the tallest of trees live far longer than bacteria, plankton, fish, and smaller mammals.  Clams and turtles are a couple exceptions, though considering their elaborate defense mechanisms- shells and carapaces- it shouldn't surprise anyone they live longer.  Metabolism is another factor: the faster an organism is relative to its mass, the lower its life expectancy.  The Earth and sun, being millions of times larger than terrestrial organisms and having much slower "metabolisms", perfectly fit statistical models that the laws of life seem to have.  I have also considered that even galaxies are alive, seeing as they are larger, older, and more or less regulate themselves. As far as reproduction, the merging of astronomical bodies, like stars and galaxies, could resemble fertilization, and thus the conception of new bodies. Clearer is the apparent solar "mitosis" of a supernova, which gives birth to thousands of baby stars. 
    The sun and the Earth have always stood as mythological icons, like God, Gaia, and Ra, guiding us through the ordeals of life.   Now they are able to stand as literal beings who can be scientifically studied by one of the creatures they created.  Creationism is no longer the myth that science has made it.  Those who fear religion in the scientific community, without even looking at the evidence right in front of them, will reject everything I've said on the basis that I've arrogantly changed the definition of life.  They should not let any preconceived notions about intelligent design sneak into their judgment.  Mine is a purely rational argument, and I didn't originally set out to prove the existence of God. I have merely been observing what's in front of me, questioning everything, and connecting the dots.  Maybe the dots aren't really there and I'm simply imagining them; maybe they really exist and science will eventually prove the life forces of our celestial brothers.  It will take a long time for the scientific community to remold the definition of life in order to make it suitable for what I am describing. Odds are it will never happen because scientists are so wrapped up in the boxes of convention that they can't see the light trying to penetrate their senses.