VIEW HEADLINES ONLY
Genetics

Non-Coding DNA Has “Far More Complexity Than Was Imagined”
April 27, 2006
The concept of “junk DNA” appears to be fading away.  “A mathematical analysis of the human genome suggests that so-called ‘junk DNA’ might not be so useless after all,” reported Paul Rincon for the BBC News.  The photo caption reads, “The genome may possess far more complexity than was imagined.”     A team from […]
CONTINUE READING
Cell Biology

How Much Can a Cell Do Without?
April 14, 2006
In an old high school game, the leader would call some unsuspecting boy to the front, put a sheet over him, and say, “Take off what you don’t need.”  Perhaps a shoe would emerge from under the sheet.  “Take off something else you don’t need,” the leader would continue, and the volume of giggling in […]
CONTINUE READING
Genetics

Few Mutational Pathways Lead to Darwinian Evolution
April 12, 2006
Mutations may not be as helpful for neo-Darwinian evolution as expected, say researchers from Harvard.  Let’s say five mutations need to occur for a bacterium to gain resistance to an antibiotic, and there are 120 ways to get these mutations.  They found that only about 10 of the pathways could be selected by natural selection.  […]
CONTINUE READING
Genetics

Isolated DNA Bases Are Destroyed Quickly
April 11, 2006
Without water, DNA bases fall apart quickly.  Any origin-of-life models expecting the building blocks of DNA (nucleotides) to stick around for long are going to suffer, say researchers from Oregon State University.  The molecules can enter a “dark state” in which they are highly vulnerable to UV radiation.  This idea was once considered “scientific heresy” […]
CONTINUE READING
Genetics

Minimum Genome Doubles
March 31, 2006
How many genes does a bacterium need to live?  Evolutionists interested in the origin of life have been trying to determine the minimal genome for life.  Those estimates may have been way too low, say researchers from the University of Bath.  Though they did not supply a number, they estimate the required number of genes […]
CONTINUE READING
Cell Biology

Introns Stump Evolutionary Theorists
March 9, 2006
This story is not about Enron and Exxon, but about introns and exons.  The proportions of the scandals they are causing in evolutionary theory, however, may be comparable.     Introns are spacers between genes.  For several decades now, it has been a puzzle why they are there, and why a complex machine called a […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

It’s a Long (Roundabout) Way from Amphioxus
February 23, 2006
“Every solution breeds new problems” laments a Murphyism, and Henry Gee feels the pain.  In Nature this week,1 he delved into the growing quandary about where to put the common ancestor of starfish, sea squirts and chordates, including the vertebrates and us human beings.  His challenge is to prove the idiot’s sanity: So, if lancelets […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Evolutionists Tackle Cambrian Explosion
February 14, 2006
You have to give credit to anyone who tackles a big problem head-on, regardless of whether you agree with their solution.  Two recent papers take on one of evolution’s biggest challenges: the Cambrian Explosion.  Assuming the evolutionary timeline, this represents a “brief” 5 million year period back 530 million years ago when most of the […]
CONTINUE READING
Dumb Ideas

Human Evolution: Clear as Mud
January 24, 2006
Evolutionists speak of our descent from apes with an air of confidence and certainty, but connecting the dots requires a bit of artistic license.  Here are some examples of how any data, no matter how puzzling, can be made to fit the Darwinian picture. Stretchy Clocks:  A famous painting by Salvador Dali portrayed clocks draped […]
CONTINUE READING
Genetics

Soil Provides Library of Antibiotic Resistance
January 19, 2006
Genetic information that confers antibiotic resistance is already present in the environmental resistome.
CONTINUE READING
Genetics

Peer Review: Can You Trust a Scientific Journal Paper?
January 9, 2006
Science magazine has egg on its face – deviled, poached, and scrambled – everything but sunny side up.  Last May, it printed one of the biggest breakthrough stories of the year in stem cell research: Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang, a professor at the Seoul National University and President of the World Stem Cell Hub, […]
CONTINUE READING
Cell Biology

Minimal Cell More Complex Than Expected
January 3, 2006
Craig Venter’s lab has been working on an interesting project in theoretical biology: what is the minimum set of genes needed for life?  They have taken one of the simplest organisms, Mycoplasma genitalium, and knocked out genes to see which ones are essential and which are nonessential for viability.  (This is part of the “top […]
CONTINUE READING
Genetics

How Blind Cave Fish Lose Color
December 26, 2005
A study on cave fish revealed that several populations can have mutations to the same gene.  A gene that produces melanin, named Oca2, was found to be mutated in two separate populations of cave fish, resulting in albinism.  This same gene can produce albinism in humans. The replicated experiment is a powerful tool for experimental […]
CONTINUE READING
Origin of Life

Don’t PNA in our OOL
December 17, 2005
Theories for the origin of life (OOL) are in a crisis, unable to imagine how something as complex as a replicating cell could come into existence. Could PNA do it?
CONTINUE READING
Cell Biology

Micro-RNAs are Cell’s Optimizers
December 12, 2005
“Unnoticed next to the main ingredients, microRNAs were considered to be ‘junk’ DNA, leftovers from millions of years of evolution.”  That line comes from an article on EurekAlert telling about how dramatically that picture has changed.  RNA molecules are now seen to be indispensable, with many roles in the cell.  This article talked about how […]
CONTINUE READING
All Posts by Date
[archives type="yearly" cat_id="33"]