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Genetics

Evolutionary Trees “Positively Misleading”
June 8, 2006
According to an article in PLoS Genetics,1 there is a fundamental flaw in the way species trees are inferred from gene trees using molecular genetics that is guaranteed to produce erroneous results: Because of the stochastic way in which lineages sort during speciation, gene trees may differ in topology from each other and from species […]
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Amazing Facts

Protein Dressing Room Has Electronic Walls
June 7, 2006
Properly folded proteins are essential to all of life.  When a polypeptide, or chain of amino acids, emerges from the ribosome translation factory on its way to becoming a protein, it looks like a useless, shapeless piece of string.  It cannot perform its function till folded into a precise, compact shape particular for its job.  […]
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Early Man

Hobbit Man, Neanderthal Man Further Scrutinized
June 6, 2006
The positions of two alleged human ancestors in the family tree is becoming clearer, or murkier, depending on whom you ask.  This illustrates the uncertainty and disparity of opinions in this field. Hobbit workshop:  Regarding the diminutive skeletons dubbed Homo floresiensis found in Indonesia, opinions seems to be condensing around the idea they were true […]
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Early Man

A Challenge to our Victorian Ethics: Humans and Chimps Interbreeding
May 22, 2006
[Guest article]  Newspapers chipped away at Christian ethics last week with articles describing evidence that “early humans” bred (hybridized) with their supposed ancestors, the chimpanzees, for millions of years after becoming another species.  The New York Times reports: David Page, a human geneticist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, said the design of the new […]
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Cell Biology

Will Genetics Be Neo-Darwinism’s Downfall?
May 4, 2006
The Institute for Creation Research is gearing up for a multi-year GENE project to look for evidence for design (and against evolution) in the genome.  They may not need to work very hard.  Secular scientists, by continuing to find things not all that helpful for neo-Darwinism, are doing yeoman’s work for them.     While […]
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Genetics

Molecular Clock Keeps Wild Time
May 2, 2006
Evolutionists used to hope that the mutation rates in genes were relatively constant, so that they could provide a kind of “molecular clock” for inferring dates of divergence of ancestral species.  The first bad news was that not all molecular clocks tick at the same rate (rate heterogeneity).  Then they hoped that rate differences corresponded […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.  […]
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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” […]
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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 […]
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Cell Biology

Reviewer Stunned by Author’s Handwaving
March 31, 2006
David Nicholls appears to have suffered whiplash from a line in a book he was reviewing in Science,1 Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life by Nick Lane (Oxford, 2006).  Though he liked the book in general, he said this about Lane’s explanation for how the first cell got its power generator: The […]
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Cell Biology

Misfolded Proteins Cause Cascade of Harmful Effects
March 12, 2006
There are a myriad ways a polypeptide chain could collapse into a shapeless mass.
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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 […]
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Amazing Facts

In Praise of Fat
March 6, 2006
Well, great balls of fat.  Cells have spherical globs of lipid (fat) molecules that never had gotten much attention nor respect.  They have been called lipid droplets, oil bodies, fat globules and other names suggesting they were just the beer bellies of the cell.  Not any more.  Scientists have been taking a closer look at […]
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