Academic literature on the topic 'Biology|Systematic biology'

The brachyuran superfamily Palicoidea Števčić, 2005, commonly referred to as stilt-crabs, currently includes the families Crossotonotidae Moosa and Seréne, 1981 and Palicidae Bouvier, 1898, consisting of two and nine genera, respectively. Both genus and species level relationships remain largely enigmatic and are based primarily upon highly variable morphological characters. Molecular phylogenetic analyses, based on COI and 16S mitochondrial gene sequences, are used to clarify relationships among primarily western Atlantic species and to independently validate diagnostic morphological characters. The resultant molecular phylogenetic tree resolves three major clades: one grouping Palicus affinis, Palicus alternatus, and Palicus bahamensis; a second grouping Palicus faxoni and Palicus obesus; and the third grouping Crossotonotus sp., Pseudopalicus sp., Palicus cristatipes, and Palicus sica. Putative specimens of P. floridanus were positioned as sister species to other groups. Molecular phylogenetic evidence infers intrageneric evolutionary history of Palicus Philippi, 1838, concordant with relationships suggested by gonopod morphology of congeners. Gonopod morphology was found to be highly conserved within species, moderately conserved among species sharing a common clade, and divergent among species in different well-separated clades. Conversely, many morphological characters that have historically been applied to describe and identify palicids were found to be highly variable within species, inconsistently variable among species, and in some cases relatively conserved across divergent clades. On the basis of present molecular phylogenetic analyses, separation of the families Crossotonotidae and Palicidae may be supported only if further revisions to membership of the family Palicidae were to be undertaken. These revisions are deferred pending more robust genetic analyses.

Modern biological research is currently canalized into two main modes of research: detailed, mechanistic descriptions, or big data collection and statistical descriptions. The former has the advantage of being conceptually tractable and fitting into an existing scientific paradigm. However, these detailed descriptions can suffer from an inability to be understood in the larger context of biological phenomena. On the other hand, the big data approaches, while closer to being able to capture the full depth of biological complexity, are limited in their ability to impart conceptual understanding to researchers. We put forward examples of an intermediate approach. The goal of this approach is to develop models which can be understood as abstractions of biological phenomena, while simultaneously being conducive to modeling and computational approaches. Firstly, we attempt to examine the phenomenon of modularity. Modularity is an ubiquitous phenomenon in biological systems, but its etiology is poorly understood. It has been previously shown that organisms that evolved in environments with lower levels of stability tend to display more modular organization of their gene regulatory networks, although theoretical predictions have failed to account for this. We put forward a neutral evolutionary model, where we posit the process of genome expansion through gene duplications acts as a driver for the evolution of modularity. This process occurs through the duplication of regulatory elements alongside the duplication of a gene, causing sub-networks to be generated which are more tightly coupled internally than externally, which gives rise to a modular architecture. Finally, we also generate an experimental system by which we can verify our model of the evolution of modularity. Using a long term experimental evolution setup, we evolve E. coli under fluctuating temperature environments for 600 generations in order to test if there is a measurable increase in the modularity of the gene regulatory networks of the organisms. This data will also be used in the future to test other hypotheses related to evolution under fluctuating environments. The second such model is a computational model of the properties of bacterial growth as a function of temperature. We describe a model composed of a chain of enzyme like actions, where the output of each enzyme in the chain becomes the substrate of the following enzyme. Using well known temperature dependence curves for enzyme activity and no further assumptions, we are then able to replicate the salient properties of bacterial growth curves at varying temperatures, including lag time, carrying capacity, and growth rate. Lastly, we extend these models to attempt to describe the ability of cancer cells to alter their phenotypes in ways that would be impossible for normal cells. We term this model the phenotypically pliant cells model and show that it can encapsulate important aspects of cancer cell behavior.

The genus Ophiocordyceps contains the most diverse assemblage of fungi attacking ants worldwide and are remarkably well adapted to the specific ecologies of their hosts. Desmidiospora myrmecophila is closely related to ant-pathogenic species within Ophiocordyceps, possibly specific to queens, but the sheer infrequency of encounters and previously unsuccessful attempts to culture this fungus has precluded any meaningful assessment until now. A new record of Desmidiospora myrmecophila from Louisiana was found infecting a foundress Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen, the same host species favored by the more common and ubiquitous ant-pathogenic Ophiocordyceps unilateralis found in the same geographic locality. To evaluate a long-held assumption that these fungi represent synanamorphs of a single species, we sampled our Desmidiospora specimen along with the local O. unilateralis population for molecular comparison. We are able to present for the first time the in vitro characteristics and morphology of Desmidiospora myrmecophila as well as a phylogenetic context for this fungus based on combined molecular analysis of representative members of the Ophiocordycipitaceae. Our results place the Desmidiospora myrmecophila lineage within the genus Ophiocordyceps but with a basal affiliation to the ant-pathogen clade. These results further implicate Desmidiospora myrmecophila as an important and quintessential example of cryptic diversity among an already taxonomically diverse and ecologically important group of fungi.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2009.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-02, Section: B, page: . Adviser: Chao Tang. Includes supplementary digital materials.

Viral infection and the subsequent immune responses such as the expression of interferon beta (ifnb1) show extreme levels of cell to cell variability. A fraction of cells get infected and a fraction of infected cells induce an ifnb1 response. These responding cells then signal to coordinate appropriate immune responses required to clear infection. The mechanism of propagation of this response at the single cell level is critical to generate an appropriate defense against the virus, yet is incompletely understood.

Interesting work on cell to cell variability has been done using transfected ifnb1 reporter constructs. However, this approach has several limitations. The reporter systems introduce multiple copies of the reporter construct in each cell, which does not reflect the conditions in the intact cells where only two of the interferon promoter and gene are present. This alters the ifnb1 enhanceosome stoichiometry from the one present in a normal physiological environment, and potentially distorts the patterns of single cell responses observed. In addition, reporter constructs integrate the response that occur over many hours, which makes it difficult to measure the expression dynamics that occur early after exposure to infection. Such measurements in the intact cells would be helpful for understanding the mechanisms underlying the propagation of this immune response.

In order to obtain sensitive and accurate measurements of changes in gene expression in infected single cells, we used single-cell single-molecule mRNA imaging to directly and simultaneously count the transcripts of ifnb1 and that of a virus (Newcastle disease virus) gene Hemagglutinin-neuraminidase hn . This experimental approach enabled us to measure the single-cell responses from the very early stages of infection, in primary immune cells. Simultaneous measurement of ifnb1 and the viral gene hn high lighted the variation in responses across cells, the temporal evolution of the expression of the two genes and their single cell correlation following infection.

We find that the single cell ifnb1 response to virus infection shows a temporally dispersed (asynchronous) pattern. A small fraction of infected cells respond very early and more ifnb1 expressing cells are recruited at later time after infection. In contrast, the single ifnb1 response to the toll like receptor stimulant LPS, follows a highly synchronous pattern, where in a large number of cells showed an ifnb1 response around the same time after treatment. These results suggest that the temporal evolution of single cell ifnb1 responses was likely dependent on the type of the inducing stimuli. Furthermore we observed that extracellular signaling plays an important role in introducing cell-to-cell variability in ifnb1gene induction in response to virus infection. Inhibition of extracellular signaling converted the response to virus infection into an early synchronous LPS-like response. Thus extracellular signaling shapes the temporally dispersed pattern of single cell ifnb1 response to viral infection.

The pattern of ifnb1 responses to virus infection involves an increase in the amplitude of the response per cell as well as an increase in the number of responding cells over time of infection. These properties may enable cells to fine tune the ifnb1 responses gradually. This strategy of mounting an antiviral cytokine response may be useful in calibrating the immune response such that an appropriate antiviral response is generated and cellular toxicity resulting from excessive cytokine expression is usually avoided.

The integration of advances in computing technology with major innovations in sequence data collection and phylogenetic inference has revolutionized evolutionary biology in the 21^st century. In particular, the continual development of both theory and software that allow for more flexibility in utilizing molecular clock methods has radically transformed our understanding of the mode and tempo of diversification across the Tree of Life. Over the course of five chapters, this dissertation explores methodological challenges to phylogenetic inference with the aim of better understanding the evolutionary history of the Holocentridae (squirrelfishes and soldierfishes).

Chapter 1 begins by focusing on the problem of accommodating clade specific rate heterogeneity in molecular clock analyses. While various nucleotide substitution models have been developed to accommodate among lineage rate heterogeneity, recently developed "uncorrelated relaxed clock" and "random local clock" models are predicted to perform better in the presence of lineage specific rate heterogeneity as these models relax assumptions of inheritance of nucleotide substitution rates between descendant lineages. Using simulations and two cetacean (whale and dolphin) datasets as a case study, we demonstrate abrupt changes in rate isolated to one or a few lineages in the phylogeny can mislead rate and age estimation, even when the node of interest is calibrated; and provide suggestions for diagnosing extreme clade specific rate heterogeneity.

Homoplasy is another important, yet often overlooked, source of error in phylogenetic studies. Chapters 2 and 3 utilize phylogenetic informative approaches to screen nucleotide sequence data for homoplasious site patterns. Using phylogenetic informativeness profiles, chapter 2 reconciles two competing hypotheses of ray-finned fish divergence times by highlighting that mitogenomic based Jurassic and Triassic divergence time estimates for most major lineages of spiny-rayed (acanthomorph) fishes were an artifact of tree extension. Evolutionary relationships of early diverging acanthomorph fishes are also contentious, with molecular data supporting either holocentrids or a clade comprised of holocentrids and primarily deep-sea fishes as the sister lineage to the species-rich percomorpha. Chapter 3 reveals this conflict to also be largely driven by homoplasy and reconciles results based on previously published data with a 132 gene next-generation sequence dataset to identify the sister lineage of percomorph and the phylogenetic placement of holocentrid fishes.

Chapter 4 continues to explore holocentrid evolutionary relationships. Using a multi-locus dataset that includes all but one holocentrid genus, this chapter provides the first molecular phylogeny of the group. The systematics of holocentrid fishes has unstable for over 100 years. We demonstrate several of the key synapomorphies for holocentrid genera are in fact homoplasious. Likewise, several genera of holocentrine (squirrelfish) are rendered consistently paraphyletic by a series of maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analyses and we propose taxonomic revisions to reflect shared ancestry.

Chapter 5 further investigates the temporal history of holocentrid evolution. Contemporary holocentrid species richness is concentrated in the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA), yet these fishes also represent some of the most numerous fossil taxa in deposits of the Eocene West Tethyan biodiversity hotspot. Using likelihood-based methods integrated with a molecular timetree that incorporates fossils as tip taxa, we reconstruct the history of range evolution for these fishes. Following the collapse of the West Tethys, holocentrids exhibit a signature of increased range fragmentation, becoming isolated between the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Ocean basins. However, rather than originating within the emerging IAA hotspot, the IAA appears to have acted as a reservoir for holocentrid diversity that originated in adjacent regions over deep evolutionary timescales. By integrating extinct lineages, these results provide a necessary historic perspective on the formation and maintenance of global marine biodiversity.

The Lesser Sunda Archipelago, also known as Nusa Tenggara, lies in the southeastern portion of Indonesia and extends between Bali in the west, and New Guinea in the east. While the Lesser Sundas themselves are oceanic islands that have never been land bridged to a continent the islands on either side do. Bali and the other Greater Sunda Islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo become periodically land bridged with Asia during glacial maxima forming the Sunda Shelf. New Guinea and Aru become periodically land bridged to Australia during glacial maxima and form the Sahul Shelf. Given their current orientation, the Lesser Sundas may act as ‘stepping stones’ for animals and plants dispersing between the Sunda and Sahul Shelves and may act as a two-way filter for organisms dispersing between two of the world’s great biogeographical realms. Alfred Russel Wallace’s discovery of a pattern of clinal mixture of species from different biogeographical realms was a key insight leading to his identification of the Wallace Line and to his creation of the field of biogeography. Even though the Lesser Sundas played a critical role in the development of the field, this region has received little subsequent attention from historical biogeographers and our current understanding of Lesser Sunda biogeography has only modestly improved relative to what was known at the time of Wallace. The reptiles and amphibians of the Lesser Sundas represent a particularly interesting group of vertebrates from a biogeographical standpoint because they appear to show distributional patterns that are most consistent with a stepping-stone model of island colonization caused by the two-way filter zone. In Chapter 1, I review the geological and biogeographical literature for the Lesser Sundas and use these sources to formulate hypotheses concerning the colonization of the archipelago by rafting terrestrial vertebrates. In Chapters 2 through 4, I investigate the possibility that flying lizards, forest skinks, and fanged frogs have colonized the archipelago in a stepping-stone manner using a phylogenomic approach (using sequence data from mtDNA and hundreds of nuclear loci) whereby the relationships among island-specific lineages can be used to infer the sequence of island colonization. Flying lizards of the genus Draco form a monophyletic group that colonized the western Inner Arc islands of Lombok or Sumbawa from the Sunda Shelf around 10 million years ago when Lombok and Sumbawa first became land-positive. Draco continued expanding eastward through the Inner Arc until they reached Lembata, while a series of dispersal events from Flores south to Sumba, east to Timor, north to Wetar, west to Alor, and finally west to Pantar (the island immediately west of Lembata). The islands of Sumbawa and Flores contain multiple non-sister lineages that are parapatrically distributed and are exchanging migrants within an island. Forest Skinks of the genus Sphenomorphus show relatively little morphological divergence across their range yet exhibit large levels of genetic divergence. The oldest lineages of Sphenomorphus within the Lesser Sundas occur on the islands of Lombok and Flores and they expanded eastward through the Inner Arc until they reached Pantar. But rather than reaching Alor from neighboring Pantar, Sphenomorphus dispersed from Flores south to Sumba, then east to Timor, Alor, and Wetar. There are multiple non-sister lineages of Sphenomorphus on Lombok, Flores, and Sumba, and estimates of migration between lineages within each island suggest that these lineages are not interbreeding. Fanged frogs of the genus Limnonectes have colonized the Inner Arc of the Lesser Sundas from the Sunda Shelf. It is possible that Limnonectes kadarsani and L. dammermani diverged in situ on Lombok after which L. kadarsani dispersed east all the way to Lembata. But rather although a tree topology consistent with a stepping-stone pattern of island colonization is suggested by the mtDNA data, the phylogenomic results suggest a leap-frog pattern where Lembata is derived from West Flores, and these two lineages are closer related to Sumbawa than they are to Eastern Flores. The parapatrically distributed lineages on Flores are experiencing asymmetrical gene flow with successful migrants moving from west to east. In summary, the oldest islands of the western Inner Arc tend to harbor the most divergent lineages for all three focal taxa, a pattern expected from lineages originating from the Sunda Shelf. In Draco and Sphenomorphus, the islands of the eastern Inner Banda Arc are colonized by way of the ‘Sumba Route’ where they disperse into the Outer Banda Arc island of Sumba and then move east to Timor, and finally north into the eastern Inner Arc. All three focal taxa show multiple non-sister lineages on some of the larger islands, suggesting either that multiple colonization events of a single island occurred, or possibly that formerly separated paleo-islands have since merged allowing for secondary contact of lineages that diverged in allopatry. These studies have shown that the biogeography of reptiles and amphibians within the Lesser Sundas is extremely complex. By examining biogeographical patterns across many co-distributed taxa these studies have the potential to provide insights into the geological history of the archipelago. From an evolutionary perspective, these studies highlight the presence of multiple independently evolving lineages within a currently described species occurring on the same island, which suggests that species diversity within reptiles and amphibians of the Lesser Sundas is underestimated.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common lethal autosomal recessive genetic disorder that affects the Caucasian population. CF is caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), and is characterized by a viscous airway surface liquid (ASL) that impairs mucociliary function and facilitates bacterial infection. The molecular mechanisms by which these symptoms result from CFTR malfunction are unclear. We hypothesized that expression and secretion of innate immune proteins is altered in CF ASL.

We sought to use cell culture models in which the only source of secreted proteins was differentiated airway epithelium. Since CFTR localizes to the apical surface of airway submucosal glands (SMG) and ciliated epithelium, cell culture models that recapitulate two parts of respiratory tract epithelium were studied: 1) SMG acini and 2) mucociliary epithelium.

We developed a three-dimensional system wherein CF (ΔF508/ΔF508) and non-CF human bronchial epithelial (HBE) cells differentiated on Matrigel into polarized glandular acini with mature lumens by two weeks with no significant variability in size. Bronchial acini expressed and secreted SMG proteins, MUC5B and lysozyme, at day 22, and exhibited vectorial secretions that were collected along with acinar cell lysates. Proteome profiling demonstrated unique protein signatures for each cellular space. However, abundant contaminating proteins from Matrigel and growth media were identified. Therefore, the ALI cell culture model of airway epithelium was chosen for quantitative proteomic comparison of CF and non-CF HBE apical secretions because the protein-rich media does not contact the apical surface.

CF and non-CF HBE cells were labeled by stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture and differentiated at ALI. LC-MS/MS and bioinformatic analysis identified seventy-one proteins with altered levels in CF secretions (+/−1.5 fold-change; p-value<0.05). Validation with antibody based biochemical assays demonstrated increased levels of MUC5AC, MUC5B, fibronectin and MMP9, and increased proteolysis/activation of complement C3, in CF secretions. Overall, the function of altered proteins in the CF secretome is indicative of an airway epithelium in a state of repair and altered immunity in the absence of infection, suggesting the downstream consequences of mutated CFTR in CF airways set the stage for chronic inflammation and infection.

Bamboo corals are a family (Isididae Lamouroux, 1812) of cnidarian anthozoans in the subclass Octocorallia. They are distinct and easily recognizable because of their unique articulating skeleton, which alternates internodes of calcium carbonate with proteinaceous sclerite (microscopic skeletal elements)-free nodes, and which is currently the primary synapomorphy for the family. Isididae is further divided into four subfamilies (Circinisidinae, Isidinae, Keratoisidinae, Mopseinae) based on several characters, including sclerite shape, size, and placement, and skeleton morphology. The deep-sea bamboo corals are classified in the most morphologically diverse subfamily, Keratoisidinae Gray, 1970. Currently, there are eight genera within the subfamily, and they are primarily distinguished based on branching pattern. Members of the subfamily are found worldwide and at depths greater than 200 m. I use genetic data to evaluate the monophyly of the Isididae, the relationships of the subfamilies to each other and other octocorals, and the monophyly of the genera within the Keratoisidinae. One genus, Acanella, is a genetically monophyletic group with a distinct polyp morphology with needle-like sclerites running obliquely up the polyp body. Additionally, I propose an evaluation of the taxonomic ranks of the bamboo corals at the family, subfamily, genus, and species levels based on morphological characters, mitochondrial genome arrangement, and mtMutS haplotypes. Re-description and classification is needed at every taxonomic level to fully describe and capture the morphological and genetic diversity observed.

AbstractRapid developments in the fields of synthetic biology and biotechnology have caused shifts in the biological risk landscape and are key drivers of future threats. From a security perspective, extending our understanding beyond current risks to include emerging threats in these and related fields can play a vital role in informing risk mitigation activities. Insights that are generated can be combined with other efforts to identify vulnerabilities and prevent undesirable outcomes. Emerging risks that may occur at some point in the future are inherently difficult to assess, requiring a systematic approach to examining potential threats. Foresight is a process to consider possible future scenarios. Comprising a range of methods and techniques, foresight processes can offer novel insights into emerging synthetic biology and biotechnology threats.This chapter offers an introduction to foresight, including definitions of key terms that could support a shared lexicon across NATO partners. An overview of different foresight methodologies, their potential applications, and different strengths and limitations are presented. As a key first step, an approach to selecting appropriate questions to guide foresight activities is suggested. Example questions for synthetic biology and biotechnology are highlighted. At the end of the chapter, the authors offer recommendations for the design of a foresight process, with the intention of providing a useable resource for NATO partners investigating emerging synthetic biology and biotechnology threats.

The article deals with the dynamic development of information and communication technologies and their impact on the education system, as well as the importance of forming an information culture of students through the use of information technologies in biology lessons. For biological science, which is constantly updated and updated information base, the use of information technologies in the educational process is becoming more rational and acceptable. In particular, the use of a virtual laboratory, an online microscope, multimedia information systems and various animations in biology classes makes the lesson interesting and useful. Thus, with the help of systematic informatization, students can be helped to study in an open education system, toform a system of thinking and independence.This article contributes to the formation of information culture in the process of teaching and training students through information and communication technologies using new information systems in biology lessons and contributes to a more detailed understanding of the problem of Informatization of education.

Engineering design is considered a creative field that involves many activities with the end goal of a new product that fulfills a purpose. Utilization of systematic methods or tools that aid in the design process is recognized as standard practice in industry and academia. The tools are used for a number of design activities (i.e., idea generation, concept generation, inspiration searches, functional modeling) and can span across engineering disciplines, the sciences (i.e., biology, chemistry) or a non-engineering domain (i.e., medicine), with an overall focus of encouraging creative engineering designs. Engineers, however, have struggled with utilizing the vast amount of biological information available from the natural world around them. Often it is because there is a knowledge gap or terminology is difficult, and the time needed to learn and understand the biology is not feasible. This paper presents an engineering-to-biology thesaurus, which we propose affords engineers, with limited biological background, a tool for leveraging nature’s ingenuity during many steps of the design process. Additionally, the tool could also increase the probability of designing biologically-inspired engineering solutions. Biological terms in the thesaurus are correlated to the engineering domain through pairing with a synonymous function or flow term of the Functional Basis lexicon, which supports functional modeling and abstract representation of any functioning system. The second version of the thesaurus presented in this paper represents an integration of three independent research efforts, which include research from Oregon State University, the University of Toronto, and the Indian Institute of Science, and their industrial partners. The overall approach for term integration and the final results are presented. Applications to the areas of design inspiration, comprehension of biological information, functional modeling, creative design and concept generation are discussed. An example of comprehension and functional modeling are presented.

Biology has long been recognized as an excellent source of analogies and stimuli for engineering design. Previous work focused on the systematic identification of relevant biological analogies by searching for instances of functional keywords in biological information in natural language format. This past work revealed that engineering keywords couldn’t always be used to identify the most relevant biological analogies, as the vocabularies between biology and engineering are sufficiently distinct. Therefore, a method of identifying biologically meaningful keywords that correspond to engineering keywords was developed. Here, we apply and refine this method by generating biologically meaningful keywords for the terms of the Functional Basis, which is widely accepted as a standardized representation of the functionality of engineering products. We present insights gained on the selection of biologically meaningful keywords for the function sets based on semantic relations. We then observe the use of our keywords by providing 4th year undergraduate design students with the biologically meaningful keywords that are related to the desired functions of their design projects.

Recently, near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) and its variations, which combine the scanning probe technology with optical microscopy, have been intensively applied in the study of biology, material science, surface chemistry, information storage, and nanofabrication. However, due to the serial scanning nature, the speed at which NSOM can successively records highly resolved images is rather limited. This hampers the applications of NSOM in characterizing dynamic response of particular samples. In this article, we perform systematic investigation of NSOM system parameters, which include scan rate, signal detector amplification, and illumination intensity. In this work, a model of signal flow for the NSOM system has been established to quantitatively investigate the interplay of the key process parameters and to further explore the technique solutions for high-speed NSOM imaging. The model is in good agreement with experimental results and the optimized conditions for high speed NSOM imaging are suggested.

Bioinspired design, the practice of looking to nature to find inspiration for engineering design, is becoming an increasingly desired approach to design. It allows designers to tap a wealth of time-tested solutions to difficult problems in a domain rarely considered by designers. Only recently have researchers developed organized, systematic methods for bioinspired design. These methods include BioTRIZ, an extension of functional modeling for bioinspired design, engineering-to-biology keyword translation tools, and specialized design tools like DANE and SAPPHIRE. These organized methods are currently active research efforts. Traditionally, however, bioinspired design has been conducted without the benefit of any organized method. Without the support of formal methods, designers have relied on the “directed method” of bioinspired design. The directed method approach simply directs designers to consider how nature might approach a problem in order to help designers find solutions. This paper presents an experiment to explore the impact upon idea generation of simply contemplating how nature would solve a design problem. This experiment is foundationally important to bioinspired engineering design method research. The results of this experiment serve as a fundamental baseline and benchmark for the comparison of more systematic, and often more involved, bioinspired design methods. A group of 121 novice designers are given one of two design problems and instructed to either generate solutions using the “directed method,” considering how nature would solve the problem, or to generate solutions without being prompted to use any method. Based on the findings presented here, the directed method offers designers no advantage in the average number of non-redundant ideas the designers can produce, the average quality of their solutions, the average solution novelty, or the variety of solutions proposed. Overall, this investigation finds no significant difference in idea generation between the directed method and the control condition. In conclusion, systematic and organized methods for bioinspired design should instead be sought to effectively leverage nature’s design knowledge.

Abstract Numerous folding patterns, structures, and behaviors exist in nature that may provide design solutions to engineering problems. While applying biological solutions to engineering design is evidently valuable, the retrieval of useful design inspiration remains a primary challenge preventing the transfer of knowledge from biology to the engineering domain. In prior research, information retrieval techniques are employed to retrieve useful biological design solutions and a text-based search algorithm is developed to return passages where folding in nature is observed. The search algorithm, called FoldSearch, integrates tailored biological keywords and filtering methods to retrieve passages from an extensive biological corpus. The objective of this paper is two-fold — 1) to demonstrate the functionality of FoldSearch, and 2) to create abstract models of the retrieved biological systems from FoldSearch which can be used for the development of novel origami crease patterns and foldable structures. In this paper, the utility of FoldSearch is demonstrated through two case studies where the retrieved biological examples undergo a design abstraction process that leads to the development of bioinspired origami crease patterns and novel foldable structures. The abstraction process is presented as a systematic design methodology for bioinspired origami for the growing research field of origami engineering.

Since the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) opened for signature in 1972, biology and other converging disciplines have advanced considerably. These changes could have profound implications for a science-based disarmament agreement like the BWC. To address changes in biology and biotechnology, BWC States Parties have established processes to review developments in science and technology (S&T), including annual expert meetings on this topic. However, shortcomings are evident in the current approaches and many BWC States Parties have expressed support for a more systematic review of science and technology under the Convention. This study seeks to inform discussions on establishing a dedicated and systematic S&T review process under the BWC through an examination of existing S&T review-type mechanisms employed in different regimes beyond the BWC, a survey of States Parties views on a possible review mechanism and a study of past and present discourse on this issue in the BWC. Based on the analysis conducted, this study also presents options for BWC States Parties to consider ahead of the Ninth BWC Review Conference.