Genetics – Page 62

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Biological Big Bang: Another Explosion at the Dawn of Life

July 23, 2009

Eugene Koonin and two friends from the NIH went tree-hunting. They examined almost 7,000 genomes of prokaryotes. They found trees all right – a whole forest of them. They even found 102 NUTs (nearly universal trees) in the forest. Unfortunately, it’s not what they wanted to find: a single universal tree of life that Darwin’s […]

Amazing Facts

Systems Biology Oddly Silent About Darwin

July 21, 2009

Two papers on the rise of “systems biology” appeared in Nature last week. Both are astounded by the complexity of the cell, but neither had anything to say about evolution, Darwin, or phylogeny – mildly surprising when the proponents of evolution keep saying that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” […]

Amazing Facts

Warning: Do NOT Mutate This Protein Complex

June 30, 2009

In each cell of your body there is a complex of 8 or more proteins bound together called the BBSome. This protein complex, discovered in 2007, should not be disturbed. Here’s what happens when it mutates: “A homozygous mutation in any BBSome subunit (except BBIP10) will make you blind, obese and deaf, will obliterate your […]

Amazing Facts

How Cells Proofread DNA Is Still Mysterious

June 29, 2009

An amazing fact about DNA transcription is that the machinery not only copies DNA onto RNA, but checks it for errors. A story in Science Daily says that researchers would expect 100 times more errors statistically than the actual results of transcription in the cell. One of the mechanisms revealed in more detail […]

Genetics

Darwinizing Sex Causes Pain

June 15, 2009

Sex brings pleasure to many, but pain to Darwinists. Why? Because they can’t figure it out. Nick Lane is a case in point. In New Scientist, he wrote, Sex is the ultimate absurdity. Forget the hormonal rushes, the sweat and the contorted posturing. Forget about the heartache, the flowers, the bad poems and the costly […]

Genetics

Animals Become Tame with Minor Genetic Changes

June 9, 2009

“In what could be a breakthrough in animal breeding, a team of scientists from Germany, Russia and Sweden have discovered a set of genetic regions responsible for animal tameness,” began a report in Science Daily. Groups of tame rats and aggressive rats were bred separately, then mated. Scientists identified genetic regions responsible for the different […]

Cell Biology

Is Horizontal Gene Transfer a Force for Evolution?

April 13, 2009

Two more genomes were published last week: the information libraries of two tiny microbes. They are members of Micromonas, green algae less than two microns across. The original paper and summary both bragged about how the genetic information is helping shed light on evolution, but did the data really contain any light? If so, the […]

Genetics

Natural Selection Studies Based on Bad Statistics

March 30, 2009

Hundreds of studies claiming to show natural selection may be wrong, say scientists from Penn State and Japan. PhysOrg reported today that “several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results.” Many studies of human evolution have relied on these flawed methods. If the […]

Genetics

More Functional Non-Coding DNA Found

March 12, 2009

Another finding undermines the concept of “junk DNA.” A team of scientists in Massachusetts found over a thousand functional RNA transcripts from intergenic sequences. These RNA transcripts, coming not from genes but from regions earlier thought to be non-functional, take part in diverse functions from stem cell pluripotency to HOX gene developmental processes to cell […]

Genetics

Darwin Had Genetic Blinders

March 4, 2009

Darwin was a contemporary of Mendel, so why did he get inheritance wrong? That question was addressed on Science Daily by Jonathan Howard of the University of Cologne, Germany. His thesis is that Darwin had philosophical blinders on that prevented him from recognizing the significance of evidence before him. “Why Didn’t Darwin Discover […]

Early Man

Language Is Not a Simple Genetic Matter

February 18, 2009

It sounds so simple. The title on an article in PhysOrg announced, in Kipling Just-So Story Format, “How gorilla gestures point to evolution of human language.” Because gorillas have an extensive repertoire of over 100 gestures, human conversation was only a matter of evolutionary time. Is this mere storytelling, or do such explanations have scientific […]

Cell Biology

Disease Genes Play the Wrong Tune

February 18, 2009

How did disease originate? It might seem that large changes in genes would be required to turn a benign cell into a pathogen, but an article on Science Daily says it might just be a good cell playing a bad tune. Bacteria have more genes than they use at any one time. What […]

Early Man

What Mean These Observations?

February 5, 2009

Science news outlets report many interesting findings every week. It’s not always clear, though, whether the conclusions drawn from them are warranted by the data. Here are some recent cases: Jaws of steel: A skull labeled Australopithecus robustus was studied for the force its jaws could generate. Interpretation: “Early humans had jaws of steel.” With […]

Genetics

New Genetics Revolution Underway

January 27, 2009

The genetics of the 1950s was that DNA is the seat of all inheritance, and that genetic information traveled one way: from DNA to protein. That “central dogma” has been changing after decades of further researchers. Theories of epigenetics (inheritance not limited to DNA) have been gaining attention with increasing frequency. Science Daily […]

Birds

Nature Struts Darwin Gems

January 2, 2009

Like a showcase of pearl-handled revolvers, an armory of evidences Nature calls “Darwin’s Gems” have been exhibited to warn creationists that Darwin Day will be defended next month with a show of force. The authors, Henry Gee (former editor of Nature), Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell have made their 15 Evolutionary Gems freely available “and […]

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