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Amazing Facts

Few Typos Get Past Your Spell Checker
June 11, 2008
Inside your cells are thousands of spell checkers that put any human typist to shame.  In a process critical to all living things, RNA Polymerase II transcribes DNA into RNA rapidly with high fidelity.  Even very similar chemical letters are accurately discriminated by this wonder of a molecular machine that is described in Science Daily. […]
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Genetics

Can Darwin Fit into Designer Genes?
June 2, 2008
Humans are tinkering with DNA in ways that appear to blur the boundaries between design and nature. PhysOrg reported that geneticists at the University of Nottingham have created capsules that can coax bacteria to transfer their genetic information.  The title is “Life, but not as we know it?” PNAS reported that scientists at UC Santa […]
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Birds

Animals Outsmart Scientists
May 15, 2008
In science, long-standing beliefs are often challenged by new evidence.  Several recent findings not only show animals to be more remarkable than thought, they pose some new questions for evolutionists. Slothlessness:  Sleeping almost all day, the sloth is the epitome of laziness in the animal kingdom.  Or is it?  The BBC News now tells us […]
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Genetics

Platypus Genome Surprises Evolutionists
May 9, 2008
Thanks to more efficient sequencing techniques, genomes of more and more animals are coming to light.  The latest is from one of the most unusual animals in nature: the duck-billed platypus of Australia.  The long and short of it: if evolutionists were confused about the phenotype (outward appearance) of this creature, they are just as […]
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Genetics

Whence Plague?
May 8, 2008
Where did bubonic plague come from?  Science News reported that two mutations turned the bacterium from a docile, innocuous bacterium into a curse.     The combination of two mutations disabled the gene for aspartase, an enzyme that breaks down aspartic acid.  When the crippled Yersinia pestis enters a host, more aspartic acid is generated […]
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Cell Biology

Fitting Data to Darwinism Takes Creativity and Spin
May 6, 2008
Fairly regularly, papers appear in journals under the heading of Evolution.  The ones dealing with genetics tend to be hard to follow.  They are filled with jargon, correlation scores, charts and network diagrams.  They employ algorithms and databases unfamiliar to the lay reader.  Overall, though, they claim to find support for Darwin’s tree of life […]
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Genetics

Nature Topples ID Straw Man
April 19, 2008
It’s easier to knock down a straw man than a strong man.  Maybe that explains the human tendency to fantasize about victory over one’s enemies.  In scientific journals, however, one would expect to deal in facts and to realistically portray adversarial positions.  Even better would be to let the adversary respond.  Nature, however, in its […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Darwin and Complexity: Another Genetic Solution?
April 2, 2008
It remains one of the biggest obstacles to belief in evolution that a random, unguided process could build an eye, a wing or any of thousands of complex structures.
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Genetics

Tuatara Genes Are Running in Place
March 24, 2008
One would expect a living fossil to show extreme stasis at the genetic level.  Not so for the tuatara, a New Zealand reptile, reported EurekAlert: researchers found that “although tuatara have remained largely physically unchanged over very long periods of evolution, they are evolving – at a DNA level – faster than any other animal […]
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Genetics

How to Translate Darwinese
March 6, 2008
A unique culture has sprung up around evolutionary biology.  Since evolutionary theory encompasses far more than just change in living species (touching on, for instance, ultimate origins, the nature of humanity and the destiny of the universe), its supporters sometimes get a little carried away in their language.  The tendency in science reporting to embellish […]
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Early Man

Evolutionary Theory Can’t Handle Language
February 21, 2008
Did a gene turn on speech?  Five years ago, evolutionary geneticists were claiming that mutations in a gene called Foxp2 were the key to human language (see 08/15/2002, 05/26/2004).  This was based on two observations: chimps do not have these mutations, and people with alterations to Foxp2 have language impediments.  This idea is very unlikely […]
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Genetics

Animals from Junk by Chance
February 12, 2008
How to build an animal: throw junk DNA at it.  That seems to be the latest idea on where higher animals came from.  A press release from University of Bristol posted on Science Daily and EurekAlert announced, “‘Junk DNA’ Can Explain Origin And Complexity Of Vertebrates, Study Suggests.”     The basic idea, coming from […]
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Genetics

Of All the Nerve: Functional Intron Discovered
February 6, 2008
An intron vital to the production of nerve cells has been discovered, reported Science Daily.  It acts as a “gatekeeper” to guide the messenger RNA for local control of gene expression in dendrites, the spindly arms of neurons.  The discovery was made by a research team at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.     […]
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Genetics

Hidden Messages Found in DNA
January 29, 2008
DNA contains the language of life, but what would happen if someone found hidden messages in the genetic code?  Such a thing actually happened, reported the New York Times.  When Craig Venter’s lab produced an artificial organism, they inserted hidden “watermarks” into the genome: his name, the names of co-workers, and the name of the […]
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Genetics

Molecular Phylogeny Is a Mess of Uncertainty
January 26, 2008
Genomes galore – a great opportunity to study evolution, right?  Think again.  A paper in Science by Wong et al1 revealed systematic uncertainty in the way genomes are compared, leading to bias that makes genetic comparisons essentially useless.  Antonis Rokas, in the same issue,2 began his commentary on this problem thus: Darwin relied on fossils, […]
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