Principles of Repurposing - Abstracts

Dave Ackley

Athena Aktipis "Assortment, levels of selection and the evolution of novel functions: insights from basic principles in the evolution of cooperation"

Luis Bettencourt

Lera Boroditsky

Lila Chrysikou "Creative Repurposing: From Goals to Tools to Features and Back Again"

Nicholas de Monchaux "Interstellar Favela: architectural repurposing and the urban/urbane extreme"

Olivier de Weck

Doug Erwin

Robert Friedel

April Harlin-Cognato

Dan Hruschka

Scott Klemmer

Ryan Lampe "Do Patent Pools Encourage Innovation? Evidence from the 19th-Century Sewing-Machine Industry"

Regulators favor patent pools as a remedy for overlapping patent grants and excessive litigation. With patent pools, member firms share patents freely with each other and offer one-stop licenses to outside firms. Thus patent pools are expected to encourage innovation by reducing litigation between pool members and lowering transaction costs for firms that are not members of the pool. We examine this prediction with the example of the first patent pool in U.S. history, the Sewing Machine Combination (1856-1877). Our data confirm that member firms patent more in the years leading up to the pool; member firms, however, patent less as soon as the pool is established. To examine whether changes in patenting translate into increases in performance, we measure improvements in the speed of sewing machines through stitches per minute. Performance data suggest that innovation flattened for the duration of the pool and increased again only after the pool had expired. Our data suggest that a patent pool may discourage innovation if it increases the threat of litigation for outside firms. To avoid litigation with the pool, outside firms shift towards inferior technologies.

Joram Piatigorsky "Gene Sharing and Evolution: Lens Crystallins Exemplify that Specialization and Diversification Can Occur Simultaneously"

Evolution is about adaptation and change. Among the most discussed mechanisms for evolution are gene duplications, which provide new sources for making altered proteins, and mutations affecting amino acid sequences of the encoded proteins. Proteins with new structures are then selected over time and provide novel functions that open new niches and/or greater ability to survive. Gene duplications and mutations occur randomly and the evolution of new functions involves “tinkering,” as described famously by Jacob in 1977. We have developed the concept of “gene sharing” through our studies on lens crystallins. Crystallins are structural proteins that account for 80-90% of the water-soluble protein of the transparent lens of the eye; crystallins are responsible for the optical, refractive properties of the lens. Crystallins were long considered highly specialized proteins that were selected specifically for their lens functions contributing to clear vision. Lenses in eyes from jellyfish to humans accumulate crystallins. Unexpectedly, however, different species often (not always) use entirely different proteins as crystallins to accomplish similar optical functions. Even more surprisingly, lens crystallins are expressed in many tissues where they have entirely different, non-refractive roles. Indeed, many crystallins are common enzymes or physiological stress proteins equally specialized for their metabolic and optical roles. Thus, they are under more than one selective constraint. Gene sharing refers to the fact several functions can share the identical gene. In the case of crystallins, a change in the expression of the gene leads to a new function without loss of the original function. Paradoxically this means that functional specialization and diversification may occur simultaneously. Gene sharing shows that neither gene duplication nor change in protein structure is necessary for functional innovation and evolution. The idea that specialization and diversification go hand-in-hand is counterintuitive and implies that protein functions do not have strict boundaries. A quantitative or qualitative change in gene expression can be sufficient to test for and eventually evolve a new function for the encoded protein, although structural changes can also occur during the specialization processes. Gene sharing challenges the investigator to determine how many ways a gene may be enlarged through multiple functions of its polypeptide rather than how it might be subdivided into an elementary unit. Gene sharing increases robustness by allowing cellular events to be coordinated by reusing the same proteins in different ways in response to biological needs: old functions are not sacrificed for implementation of new functions. Gene sharing fits well with the idea that proteins are selected for marginal stability allowing conformational diversity and accumulation of neutral mutations rather than structural and functional rigidity. Marginal stability increases the ability of proteins to interact and increases evolvability, namely the propensity to evolve and adapt. Gene sharing occurs widely, affecting many if not most proteins, and provides a fluid and interactive view of evolution.

Victor Seidel

Jessika Trancik

Jon Wilkins