BioCC: An Openfree Hypertext Bio Community Cluster for Biology

We present an openfree hypertext (also known as wiki) web cluster called BioCC. BioCC is a novel wiki farm that lets researchers create hundreds of biological web sites. The web sites form an organic information network. The contents of all the sites on the BioCC wiki farm are modifiable by anonymous as well as registered users. This enables biologists with diverse backgrounds to form their own Internet bio-communities. Each community can have custom-made layouts for information, discussion, and knowledge exchange. BioCC aims to form an ever-expanding network of openfree biological knowledge databases used and maintained by biological experts, students, and general users. The philosophy behind BioCC is that the formation of biological knowledge is best achieved by open-minded individuals freely exchanging information. In the near future, the amount of genomic information will have flooded society. BioGG can be an effective and quickly updated knowledge database system. BioCC uses an opensource wiki system called Mediawiki. However, for easier editing, a modified version of Mediawiki, called Biowiki, has been applied. Unlike Mediawiki, Biowiki uses a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text editor. BioCC is under a share-alike license called BioLicense (http://biolicense.org). The BioCC top level site is found at http://bio.cc/

The Atom of Evolution

The main mechanism of evolution is that biological entities change, are selected, and reproduce. We propose a different concept in terms of the main agent or atom of evolution: in the biological world, not an individual object,but its interactive network is the fundamental unit of evolution. The interaction network is composed of interaction pairs of information objects that have order information. This indicates a paradigm shift from 3D biological objects to an abstract network of information entities as the primary agent of evolution. It forces us to change our views about how organisms evolve and therefore the methods we use to analyze evolution.