In a study, published today in Science Advances, researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Ghent have shown how exploring the unknown may be the crucial step needed to realise the continual innovation needed for the biotechnologies of the future.

Recognising the role of open-endedness in achieving this goal and its growing importance in fields like computer science and evolutionary biology, the team mapped out how open-endedness is linked to bioengineering practice today and what would be required to achieve it in the lab.

For success, algorithms used for biological design should not solely focus on moving toward a specific goal — such as better yield – but also consider the creation and maintenance of novelty and diversity in the solutions that have been found.

Dr Thomas Gorochowski, co-author and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at Bristol, explained: “When we try to design a complex biological process, it’s often tempting to just tweak something that partially works rather than take the risk of trying something completely new.

“In this work we highlight that in these situations the best solutions often come from unexpected directions, because we don’t always fully understand how everything works. With biology, there are lots of unknowns and so we need a vast and diverse toolkit of building blocks to ensure we have the best chance of finding the solution we need.”

Professor Michiel Stock, lead author from Ghent University, added: “Biological systems have a natural capacity for innovation that has led to the overwhelming biodiversity we see in nature today.

“Our own attempts to engineer biology, in contrast, lack this creativity — they are far more rigid, less imaginative, and often doesn’t make the best use of what biology is capable of.

“With all life around us originating from the open-ended process of evolution, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could harness some of that power for our own biological designs.”

The ability to create new biotechnologies is becoming increasingly important for tackling global challenges spanning the sustainable production of chemicals, materials and food, to advanced therapeutics to combat emerging diseases. Fueling this progress are innovations in how biology can be harnessed in new ways. This work supports this goal by offering a fresh direction for new research and design approaches.

The study was made possible due to a travel grant from the FWO Flanders and funding from the Royal Society, BBSRC and EPSRC.

The findings, published in Science Advances, help explain the role oceans played in past glacial melting cycles and could improve predictions of how ocean carbon cycles will respond to global warming.

Oceans adjust atmospheric CO₂ as ice ages transition to warmer climates by releasing the greenhouse gas from carbon stored within the deep ocean. The research demonstrates a striking correlation between global ocean oxygen contents and atmospheric CO₂ from the last ice age to today — and how carbon release from the deep sea may rise as the climate warms.

“The research reveals the important role of the Southern Ocean in controlling the global ocean oxygen reservoir and carbon storage,” said Yi Wang, lead researcher and an assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University School of Science and Engineering. Wang specializes in marine biogeochemistry and paleoceanography.

“This will have implications for understanding how the ocean, especially the Southern Ocean, will dynamically affect the atmospheric CO₂ in the future,” she said.

Wang conducted the study with colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world’s leading independent nonprofit organization dedicated to ocean research, exploration and education. She worked for the institute before joining Tulane in 2023.

The team analyzed seafloor sediments collected from the Arabian Sea to reconstruct average global ocean oxygen levels thousands of years ago. They precisely measured isotopes of the metal thallium trapped in the sediments, which indicate how much oxygen was dissolved in the global ocean at the time the sediments formed.

“Study of these metal isotopes on glacial-interglacial transitions has never been looked at before, and these measurements allowed us to essentially recreate the past,” Wang said.

The thallium isotope ratios showed the global ocean lost oxygen overall during the last ice age compared to the current warmer interglacial period. Their study revealed thousand-year global ocean deoxygenation during abrupt warming in the Northern Hemisphere, whereas the ocean gained more oxygen when abrupt cooling occurred during the transition from the last ice age to today. The researchers attributed the observed ocean oxygen changes to Southern Ocean processes.

“This study is the first to present an average picture of how the oxygen content of the global oceans evolved as Earth transitioned from the last glacial period into the warmer climate of the last 10,000 years,” said Sune Nielsen, associate scientist at WHOI and co-author of the research. “These new data are a really big deal, because they show that the Southern Ocean plays a critical role in modulating atmospheric CO₂. Given that high latitude regions are those most affected by anthropogenic climate change, it is troubling that these also have an outsize impact on atmospheric CO₂ in the first place.”

Other authors include Kassandra Costa, Sophie Hines, and Wanyi Lu.

The Megalodon or megatooth shark is typically portrayed as a super-sized monster in popular culture, with recent examples in the sci-fi films “The Meg” (2018) and “Meg 2: The Trench” (2023). Previous studies assume that the shark likely reached lengths of at least 50 feet and possibly as much as 65 feet.

However, the Megalodon is largely known only from its teeth and vertebrae in the fossil record — a rather incomplete set of data from which to draw assumptions. Thus, the modern great white shark was traditionally used as a model for Megalodon bodies in previous studies. That model led researchers to conclude that the shark was round and stocky like great whites.

“Our team reexamined the fossil record, and discovered the Megalodon was more slender and possibly even longer than we thought. Therefore, a better model might be the modern mako shark,” said UCR biologist and paper first author Phillip Sternes. “It still would have been a formidable predator at the top of the ancient marine food chain, but it would have behaved differently based on this new understanding of its body.”

For the new study published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, a team of 26 scientists from around the world, co-led by Sternes and DePaul University paleobiology professor Kenshu Shimada, was inspired by differences in previously estimated body lengths for the Megalodon.

“It was a ‘eureka-moment’ when our research team realized the discrepancy between two previously published lengths for the same Megalodon specimen,” said Shimada.

The team then weighed in on a new comparison of Megalodon vertebra fossils to those of living lamniform shark relatives. “We measured the whole vertebral skeleton of a living great white shark with a CT scanner and compared that to the previous reconstruction of the Megalodon vertebral column,” Sternes said.

“It was still a giant, predatory shark. But the results strongly suggest that the Megalodon was not merely a larger version of the modern great white shark.”

A revised understanding of the Megalodon body type would in turn affect scientists’ understanding not only of the giant shark itself, but also of its impact on the ecology and evolution of marine ecosystems that shaped the present-day oceans.

There is no doubt the Megalodon is one of the largest marine predators ever to have lived. But a slimmer and more elongated body would suggest the Megalodon also had a longer digestive canal. Sternes explained that in this case, the sharks might have enjoyed enhanced absorption of nutrients, and may not have had to eat as often as previously believed.

“With increased ability to digest its food, it could have gone for longer without needing to hunt. This means less predation pressure on other marine creatures,” Sternes said. “If I only have to eat one whale every so often, whale populations would remain more stable over time.”

Some shark scientists have theorized that a natural decrease in prey led to the extinction of Megalodons. However, Sternes has another theory, in part supported by the revised understanding of its shape.

“I believe there were a combination of factors that led to the extinction, but one of them may have been the emergence of the great white shark, which was possibly more agile, making it an even better predator than the Megalodon,” Sternes said. “That competition for food may have been a major factor in its demise.”

The research team of shark experts from the U.S., UK, Austria, France, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and Australia all feel that a revised understanding of ancient marine life would have a cascading effect on the oceans that are still visible today.

“Now that we know it was a thinner shark, we need to reinvestigate its lifestyle, how it really lived, and what caused it to die,” Sternes said. “This study represents a major stepping stone for others to follow up on.”