/sci/ - Science & Math

I'm considering to enter Evolutionary Biology because I want to play god and manipulate life. I'm also drawn to the idea of keeping living organisms other than humans around my home and workplace. Are there any evolutionary biologists here? Please talk about your field and your relation to it. Elaborate on ideas, implications and issues please.

>>5278518
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

>lol u jelly?

do organisms that reproduce asexually evolve more slowly?

>>4557903
>That's morally and economically wrong. It's a fad and it just consumes money.

Well, no, some forms do and some forms do not. Virgin Oceanic for instance will be taking high paying tourists to the Challenger Deep. The Jules Undersea Lodge and various other undersea hotels and restaurants like the Red Sea Star and Ithaa around the world cater to tourists and turn a tidy profit.

The science side of it is funded without expectation of profit because that is how you do science. Occasionally they do find astonishing things that make money.

Specifically in recent years many advances in biotechnology and life extension research have focused on deep sea organisms that show either negligible senescence (deepsea lobsters) or the ability to age in reverse (Turritopsis nutricula, pic related).

>The oceanic trenches are totally useless to us. Now that we know enough about them, there's no sane reason to go back to them.

We don't, though. We've just begun to properly explore one out of the five deepest trenches on Earth. And perhaps 5% of the ocean floor overall as of the recent Marine Census.

>>4018814

>I think what you're missing is that discovering any life that evolved on another world would be a huge, world changing event

I don't think it would be. I think an educated minority would be extremely excited and ufo nuts would go wild, but the public would buzz about it for a few months before it's forgotten. In the end, a microbe is a microbe, and the public has a short attention span for anything that isn't prurient.

I think the people who say that on /sci/ are really saying via subtext that the discovery of alien life will finally put religion to rest. It won't, they're already preparing the necessary theological contortions to paint such a discovery as a vindication of scripture rather than any sort of problem for it. They do this for every potentially problematic discovery, that or fight to erode its credibility. They are pros at this and have been honing their face-saving techniques for thousands of years. There are many reasons we might look forward to the discovery of alien life, this is not among them.

>simply because it would confirm that life can exist elsewhere and that we're not alone in the universe.

I think any sensible person already knows this. It's true we can't say it with authority until we find life elsewhere, but the alternatives are vastly less probable. Who seriously thinks that life could only ever evolve on Earth? Are we considering it a real possibility that life doesn't naturally arise, and that Earth was specially chosen to be its only habitat?

>Finding some new species of fish isn't even close to that important.

Except that every example of biological immortality we have is in a sea creature. The most exotic and medically useful compounds discovered have all been products of deep sea organisms. It produces the wildest variety and greatest evolutionary novelty of any biome on Earth and we stand to learn more from it than a trip to Mars.

>>2741066
>limited lifespan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

>>2299529
Tell that to Turritopsis Nutricula

>>1799670

>Yep. Life has a 100% fatality rate.

Oh, hi, I didn't see you there, what with me being the immortal jellyfish and all.

>>1785580

Hi, I'm the immortal jellyfish. I can't die, at least not by aging.

Sucks to be you, Mr. Fish.

u jelly?