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Genetics

Genes Are Not Telling the Whole Story
October 20, 2002
A growing realization is dawning on geneticists: there is more going on in DNA than previously imagined.  Now that whole genomes are becoming available, scientists are eagerly trying to understand how the genetic code (genotype) produces a full-grown organism (phenotype), like a fruit fly or human.  The interesting stuff in DNA used to be the […]
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Cell Biology

“Genomic Junk” Is Cell’s Air-Traffic Control
July 20, 2002
51; Linc-RNAs (large intervening non-coding RNAs) have been promoted from junk molecules to air traffic controllers.  A mystery about these transcripts of DNA that are not translated into proteins is being explained.     Science Daily reported on work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute that found these RNA molecules […]
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Genetics

Something from Nothing Dept.: Can a Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Climb Mt. Improbable?
June 20, 2002
Darwinian evolution from the most primitive organisms to the most advanced must have produced huge increases in functional information (see 06/12/2003 entry).  Yet finding specific genetic mechanisms for just how DNA succeeded in “climbing Mt. Improbable,” as Richard Dawkins termed it in his book of the same name, has been daunting.  In a recent paper […]
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Dumb Ideas

Media Becoming Ambivalent on How to Spin Evolution
June 20, 2002
Anti-evolutionists remain the whipping boys of science, but some reporters, at least, seem to be waffling on the effectiveness of the torture.  For others, the heat of the battle is apparently wearing them down.  Some even seem to be entertaining treasonous thoughts that the Darwinists are unable or unwilling to provide the promised reinforcements. Chimp […]
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Cell Biology

Cellular Machines Coming to Light
May 20, 2002
51; As imaging techniques improve, cells are yielding up their secrets.  Scientists are getting closer to watching the processes in cellular factories in real time. Dynein:  PhysOrg reported, “Biologists capture cell’s elusive ‘motor’ on videotape, solving the mystery of its deployment.”  The article began, “Their experiments can be likened to restoring never-before-seen footage to a […]
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Amazing Facts

Genetics: Alternate Reading Frames May Be Common
May 20, 2002
Imagine a book written in a language where there were no spaces, and every word was three letters long.  Now imagine that you could get one story by starting at the first letter, and a different story by starting at the second letter, and another by starting at the third letter.  That’s the situation with […]
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Genetics

Large Individual Differences Seen in Human Genome
May 20, 2002
What makes each individual unique?  Nature1 reported a surprising thing about “the” human genome that is becoming apparent as more individuals’ genes are examined.  The first part is not surprising; the last part is: When the finished sequence of the human genome was unveiled last year, biologists said that it told a story of harmony […]
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