Genetics – Page 62

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Inefficiency Made You Complex

November 3, 2009

Remember the old Darwinian story? Slight variations that prove beneficial are naturally selected when they help an organism adapt to its environment. Wrong. According to Ariel Fernandez of Rice University, we humans are complex because natural selection is inefficient. He said, “the origins of some key aspects of the evolution of complexity may have their […]

Amazing Facts

DNA Organization Is Fractal

October 13, 2009

How would you pack spaghetti in a basketball (07/28/2004) such that you could get to any strand quickly? You might try the “fractal globule” method. You form little knots, or globules, on each strand. These become like beads on a string. Now you fold the beads into globules, and then fold those into higher-level globules. […]

Dumb Ideas

Emergence of Genetic Code Touted

August 31, 2009

Most origin-of-life researchers have acknowledged the extreme improbability of the genetic code arising by chance. Their approaches to get around this problem have varied considerably since the Miller experiment succeeded in generating a few amino acids. Despite the celebrations that 1953 experiment generated (05/02/2003), it did not even begin to approach the problem of solving […]

Darwin and Evolution

Return of the Peppered Mice

August 28, 2009

Slight changes in the coat color of deer mice is the latest triumph of evolutionary theory.

Amazing Facts

DNA Translator More Complicated Than Thought

August 24, 2009

One of the most remarkable molecular machines in your body, the ribosome, is coming to light, nanometer by nanometer, as scientists find new ways to peer into the inner workings of the “black box.” Science Daily reported on work at Berkeley that has given the clearest imagery yet. “Ribosomes, which number in the […]

Cell Biology

Did Evolution Create Genetic Proofreading?

August 9, 2009

Protein manufacture in the cell is such a critical operation, there are numerous error-checking mechanisms the cell uses to get it right. One of the most amazing is the careful association of DNA codons with amino acids, and the “proofreading” or “spell checking” that ensures fidelity. How could spell checking evolve? Science Daily […]

Genetics

Epigenetics Rising in Consciousness of Geneticists, Embryologists

July 27, 2009

The old story of genetics was that all the information is in genes, and when sperm and egg unite, it’s only the combination of genes from parents that affect the offspring. That view has been under challenge for years now as geneticists and embryologists find more and more evidence for additional heritable factors that affect […]

Darwin and Evolution

Selfish Gene Mutates, Dies a Metaphorical Death

July 24, 2009

Richard Dawkins proposed in his book The Selfish Gene that a gene, being the target of natural selection and unit of replication, is the entity most likely to get passed on to posterity; as such, it is “selfish” in that the rest of the organism is really only incidental to its immortality. Dawkins expanded this […]

Cell Biology

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 […]

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