Science & Cocktails – How evolution creates complexity: from viruses to brains

How evolution creates complexity: from viruses to brains

Science & Cocktails is excited to announce a new episode with Christoph Adami, Professor for Microbiology, Genetics and Immunology, as well as Physics and Astronomy, at Michigan State University, and author of “The Evolution of Biological Information”. Christopher will delve into the theory behind evolution and how everything can be viewed as information. All this after Lars Fiil plays modern Nordic jazz.

Tickets

• Seated tickets are paid.
• Standing tickets are free and valid until 8pm. This means that you should enter before 8pm and can stay the entire event.
• After 8pm we let people in on a first come, first served basis.

What is the event about?

Is Darwinian evolution something that happens only on Earth? Can we measure how much information is stored in our genes? How does cancer hide information from us?

Darwinian evolution has given rise to all life on Earth. Is this process unique to Earth, or would evolution work just as well on other worlds where the conditions are right? In this talk, Christoph Adami will view evolution through the lens of information theory, and argue that evolution is a universal process because it acts on information, however it may be encoded. After a look back to understand why it took so long understand the fundamental principles of evolution, he will discuss early and recent experiments testing evolution, how information theory can shed light on the origin of life (here and elsewhere in the universe), and how information might hold the key to understanding complex diseases such as cancer.