evolgen
Posts by this author
November 20, 2006
Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan have written a book on evolutionary theory. Check out Massimo's description on his blog. But it's not all masturbatory philosophy -- these guys understand the science. Here's Massimo describing their treatment of adaptive landscapes:
To make the story short (…
November 20, 2006
The Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views blog neither reports news on evolution nor offers interesting views. One of their bloggers, Casey Luskin, is notorious for misunderstanding and misrepresenting science -- which is par for the course at the Disco. Casey recently decided to attack a…
November 20, 2006
One of the potentially most interesting, yet untapped, area of study in population biology is that of intra-individual variation. One thing we do know, however, is that this variation can contribute to cancers. When cells accumulate mutations, some of these cell lines become cancer cells due to…
November 19, 2006
Like a lot of evolutionary biologists not studying the root of the tree of life, I assumed the three domain hypothesis was fairly well supported by the research community. This model posits that the tree of life can be broken up into three taxa at its most basal level: eukaryotes, bacteria, and…
November 18, 2006
Most of the DNA sequenced from the Neanderthal genome projects came from the microbes that decomposed the dead fella'. This poses a problem for the human geneticists who are only interested in the Neanderthal DNA. But you could probably do some interesting things with the non-Neanderthal DNA. John…
November 18, 2006
After a month-long hiatus, a new edition of Animalicules is available at Baumhaus (I think the name means tree house). Animalicules has posts from around the blogosphere about microscopic living things. Check it out.
November 17, 2006
. . . and so does the current grant review system. And manuscript review sucks, too. And your argument is based on flawed data.
A couple of months ago I posted on an article in Cell that drew parallels between the NIH grant review process and the TV show American Idol. As someone new to the grant…
November 16, 2006
Yesterday, I mentioned that one of the greatest technological developments that contributed to the evolution of population genetics was the automation of DNA sequencing. I was unaware, however, that the automated DNA sequencing method that most people use was patented by a group from Caltech (…
November 16, 2006
The editors are asking us for the best pickup lines for scientists and science-savvy folks. How's about this:
Hey baby, that's a nice cleavage furrow, how about we introgress? I promise, no incomplete penetrance.
November 15, 2006
Razib and John Hawks have been all over the Neanderthal introgression story, but they hinted that there was more. And they thought that more would come from Svante Paabo. And it has, in the form of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA sequence published in this week's issue of Nature (here is…
November 15, 2006
Nature has published a correspondence from Maciej Giertych, a Polish biologist, defending his view that evolutionary biology is bullshit. He's actually striking back at Nature for this news item on creationism in Poland. Long story short, the League of Polish Families (LPR), a group led by Roman…
November 15, 2006
Dan Hartl just finished a two day whirlwind speaking tour at my university (three talks in under 24 hours). He discussed detecting weak selection in protein coding sequences, identifying the underlying genetic causes of phenotypic variation in yeast, and the genetics of malaria parasites. I won't…
November 14, 2006
As I've pointed out before, the big division in biology is currently between computational groups and wet labs. Michael White agrees with me. Here's his take on the current state of computational work in cell biology:
The result is that you get different groups coming up with all sorts of new…
November 13, 2006
They just act stoned.
As Dean Wormer would tell you, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life." We can rule out that manatees are drunk -- although alcohol run off from Panama City Beach may bump the Gulf of Mexico up to 10 proof, that's hardly enough liquor to get a half ton beast…
November 10, 2006
Neil Saunders goes searching for the MCPH1 gene in the Neanderthal sequences available in Genbank. You'll have to go over to his site to see what he found.
November 10, 2006
In case you didn't hear, a sea urchin genome has been sequenced, analyzed, and the results published (Science has a page dedicated to it here). I say a sea urchin genome because there are many species of sea urchins. This paper reports the sequence of one species, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, a…
November 10, 2006
I stole this picture from the front page of my university's student newspaper:
The Dog Fucker looks pissed. His wife is forcing a smile. And his daughter looks like she's about to cry. I feel bad for his daughter. Imagine growing up in a house where the biggest concern is that you don't fuck the…
November 9, 2006
In one of the most important papers in population genetics, Begun and Aquadro showed that levels of DNA sequence polymorphism are positively correlated with recombination rate. There are three ways of interpreting this result:
Recombination is mutagenic, and polymorphism is higher with increased…
November 8, 2006
They've finally done it. Bruce Lahn's lab has an article in PNAS (review here) showing evidence for introgression of a gene from an archaic Homo species into the modern human genome. They suggest the possibility that Neanderthals are that archaic species. That's right: there are Neanderthals among…
November 7, 2006
That's right: if you study human genetics, you suck. In relation to Drosophila geneticists, of course. You see, human geneticists are boring. Drosophila geneticists come up with clever names for genes. When the homologues are identified in humans, the names are deemed offensive and inappropriate.…
November 7, 2006
This morning, I walked into my local polling place, signed in, and voted. There were fewer than ten items on the ballot, and it only took a few minutes. I had to wait a moment for one of the booths to open up, but there was no one in line ahead of me. If people aren't voting at 8am before work,…
November 7, 2006
A few months ago, JP posted at GNXP that random mating is not necessary for Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE). One round of random mating is still sufficient to achieve HWE genotype frequencies, but there are some non-random mating strategies that will also allow for HWE.
HWE is quite robust to…
November 5, 2006
The Seed editorial staff want to know how we're voting in the upcoming election. I try to avoid politics on this blog -- not because I don't have an opinion, but because I'd rather write about science. Here's what they want to know:
What's the most important local political race to you this year (…
November 4, 2006
For all you runners and cyclists out there, I give you a toy you're sure to enjoy: Gmaps Pedometer.
Ever had a ride or run you wanted to do, but weren't sure how long it was or the elevation change? Enter Gmaps Pedometer. It works with the Google Maps interface, by far the best online maps…
November 3, 2006
When Phylogeny Friday last made an appearance on this blog, we were exploring the vertebrates. This was part of a larger series in which we were working our way through the eukaryotes, focusing on animals. I've come to realize that weekly phylogenies are too much, so we're scaling Phylogeny Friday…
November 2, 2006
A couple of days ago I showed you pictures of where we can find Drosophila in the Southwestern United States. Today, I'll show you some pictures of those flies. Below the fold are flies with racing stripes and others with fancy colored testicles. That's right: fly balls only a click away. You know…
November 1, 2006
You are all the products of retard fish having sex with squirrels. And monkeys are involved somehow. Anyway, someone needs to post Mr. Mrs. Garrison's lesson on evolution from tonight's South Park. All I've got is this:
All hail the retarded fish frogs!!
But Dawkins having the hots for Garrison is…
November 1, 2006
Sorry to beat a long-dead horse, but I thought I saw a leg twitch:
Atlantic Books have begun to publish this year a series of texts titled 'Books that shook the world', which, rightly, includes a new biography of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species by Janet Browne. And some new shaking definitely…
November 1, 2006
Nature Reviews Genetics has published a review (go figure) of speciation genetics penned by Mohamed Noor and Jeff Feder. Here is the purpose of the review, from the horses' mouths:
Here, we review how recent advances in molecular and genomic techniques are helping to achieve a greater understanding…
October 31, 2006
As promised, I'll be posting some pictures of flies we caught in and around Tucson, Arizona. But before we can talk about the flies, we need to talk about the local flora. The host plants for these flies serve as a restaurant, discotheque, bedroom, and nursery. In Arizona, those plants tend to be…