Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas 302 | Chris Kempes on the Biophysics of Evolution
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Jan 20, 2025 
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Centimeter-Long Bacteria
- The centimeter-long bacterium Thiomargarita magnifica challenges assumptions about bacterial size limits.
- It achieves its length by growing as filaments, not as a single large blob.
Physical Constraints in Biology
- Biological organisms are embedded in the physical world and obey the laws of physics.
- This places constraints on their architectures, morphologies, and sizes.
Dominant Constraints and Convergence
- Dominant physical constraints create unavoidable valleys in the fitness landscape.
- These constraints strongly influence trait optimization, leading to convergent evolution.