• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I find it fascinating that researchers have been able to acquire so much structural details about vaults without figuring out their purpose. It’s possible that they’re bits of evolutionary garbage - things that don’t contribute to survival in any discernible way, but also don’t hurt anything, so natural selection doesn’t get rid of them.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Cells make too many of them to not have a purpose. There is a large energy cost to manufacturing 10k-100k per cell. That’s enough for selection to remove them if they were useless.

      What’s probably going on is they have an important but uncommon purpose. Like a fire extinguisher. They are in most buildings but a lot of people will never see a situation where one is needed.