-
Categories
-
Pharmaceutical Intermediates
-
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients
-
Food Additives
- Industrial Coatings
- Agrochemicals
- Dyes and Pigments
- Surfactant
- Flavors and Fragrances
- Chemical Reagents
- Catalyst and Auxiliary
- Natural Products
- Inorganic Chemistry
-
Organic Chemistry
-
Biochemical Engineering
- Analytical Chemistry
-
Cosmetic Ingredient
- Water Treatment Chemical
-
Pharmaceutical Intermediates
Promotion
ECHEMI Mall
Wholesale
Weekly Price
Exhibition
News
-
Trade Service
| Young scholars: fossil digitization research is expected to better crack the code of biological evolution |
China News Service, Beijing, September 7 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Fossils, as the most important and almost the only material in paleontological research, have been inevitably affected by the preservation environment for a long time, and the noise caused incomplete and distorted morphological features.
This will affect subsequent studies on phylogeny and functional morphology
.
In response to this problem, the latest collaborative research of many young scholars in the field of paleontology proposed that, just as modern communication systems ushered in great development after digital signals replaced analog signals, the future digital research of paleontology based on information theory could affect the noise in fossils, etc.
The quantification of morphological information is expected to help the academic community better crack the code of biological evolution
.
By the American Museum of Natural History more than Cong Yu, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking Esa its Gao, China Kexue Yuan outcome paper "morphological features information" together to complete the Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology Wang Bing, etc.
, recently in international academic journals "Ecology and Evolution" was published online, clearly proposing that information theory and communication systems engineering can be used as the theoretical basis for the study of paleontological morphology
.
They said that although some previous studies discussed the integrity of fossil preservation in different regions and chronologies, most of them remained on data collection and statistics, and did not quantify the impact of noise in fossils
.
The latest collaborative research discusses the information entropy (information amount) and mutual information channel capacity in multiple vertebrate morphological characteristic matrices.
It is proposed that the current morphological matrix does not distinguish between source coding and channel coding.
The information entropy with large differences between features is often ignored.
Too many features in the matrix may lead to inefficient information transmission
.
According to their analysis, the most basic problem in paleontology is similar to that of communication, which lies in the modern approximation or accurate reproduction of paleontology in geological ages, including their evolutionary history, morphological functions, and many other aspects
In the study of paleontological phylogeny, most studies can only rely on morphological data.
In contrast, in the phylogeny of modern organisms or recently extinct organisms, researchers can use DNA or protein sequences to facilitate digitization.
Data
.
Therefore, DNA or protein sequences are very close to digital signals in modern communication systems, while morphological data are closer to analog signals
This collaborative study first calculated the information entropy of each feature in multiple vertebrate morphological feature matrices, and features with more feature states have significantly higher information entropy
.
After further research, we calculated the mutual information between feature pairs in each feature matrix, and found that the correlation between features is widespread
In addition, the study also compared the phylogenetic results of equal weighting, implicit weighting and information entropy weighting in multiple vertebrate groups
.
Although the final result is very close, the information entropy weighting does not require any prior knowledge at all, and directly establishes the relationship between the feature weight and the information entropy, and has better interpretability and fewer additional assumptions than other weighting methods
The cooperative research team pointed out that with the advancement of observation methods, paleontologists need to deal with a rapidly increasing amount of data, but currently a large amount of paleontological data still relies on manual processing by researchers
.
Although a large number of digital methods have been practiced in paleontological research, such as morphological feature matrices and landmark-based morphological geometry, CT scans, etc.
They stated that the academia uses the well-developed information theory and communication system engineering as the theoretical basis, which can provide theoretical support for the digitization of morphological data, and will also provide guidance for phylogenetic research based on morphology
.
(over)
