evolution
evolgen | November 10, 2006In 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 model organism in developmental biology.
Despite the fact they are quite common-place, genome sequencing projects still draw some attention in the popular science press (see the honeybee as an example). And, as usual, the articles written about this scientific study are fraught with errors and…
pharyngula | November 9, 2006
Mike Klymkowsky is selling some snazzy evo-wear in the name of bioliteracy. I'm definitely going to have to get that tree of life t-shirt.
Here's yet another set of Evo-T shirts. No self-respecting biologist need expose his or her breasts to the world ever again!
jrosenhouse | November 9, 2006Philosopher Thomas Nagel reviewed Dawkins' book for The New Republic. Sadly, the review does not seem to be freely available online.
Nagel begins with the standard talking points about Dawkins working outside his field of expertise and about how contemptuous he is of religion. After a few hundred words of this, he gets down to business. He describes the argument from design, and then offers two objections commonly levelled at it. Let me briefly mention the second one:
Second, the designer and the manufacturer of a watch are human beings with bodies, using physical tools to mold and put…
pharyngula | November 8, 2006Fascinating stuff…read this paper in PNAS, Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage, or this short summary, or John Hawks' excellent explanation of the concepts, it's all good. It's strong evidence for selection in human ancestry for a gene, and just to make it especially provocative, it's all about a gene known to be involved in brain growth, and it's also showing evidence for interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neandertal man.
The short short explanation: a population genetics study of a gene called…
razib | November 7, 2006Update II: Follow up post. You really should read Greg and John Hawks, seeing as how they have a paper in the pipeline on this topic which is stepping off from where Lahn et. al. left off.
Update: Greg and John Hawks have much more must read stuff!
Read about it here. Here is the paper, Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage:
At the center of the debate on the emergence of modern humans and their spread throughout the globe is the question of whether archaic Homo lineages contributed to the modern…
clock | November 7, 2006Last night I went back to my old campus to attend the Dr. Robert Rabb Lecture by Ken Miller. The Stewart Theater was packed. I saw a lof of old friends, but, as it was crowded, only got to spend some time talking to a couple of them.
Oh, there were bloggers there, too, of course. I first met up with Reed and Professor Steve Steve. Steve Steve is omnipresent (today in Raleigh, NC, yesterday in Vancouver, before that in Australia), omniscient and omnipotent (knew how and then fixed the computer and projector for the speaker) and benevolent (endless patience getting his picture taken with…
loom | November 7, 2006A while back I blogged about the tens of thousands of viruses we carry in our genomes. In today's New York Times I write about how scientists reconstructed a working ancestral virus from its disabled descendants: Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA.
Here's the original paper.
razib | November 6, 2006Neandertals and moderns mixed, and it matters:
Twenty-five years ago, the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe could be represented as a straightforward process subsuming both the emergence of symbolic behavior and the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans...Over the last decade, however, taphonomic critiques of the archeology of the transition have made it clear that, in Europe, fully symbolic sapiens behavior predates both the Aurignacian and moderns. And, in line with evidence from the nuclear genome rejecting strict replacement models based on mtDNA alone, the small…
razib | November 5, 2006Hawks on Neandertal introgression:
The bottom line is that the bones are modern (i.e., not Neandertal), but they include features that are common in Neandertals. Almost all the other European bones of early Upper Paleolithic date also have Neandertal features. The number and frequency of such features in this earliest Upper Paleolithic sample are greater than in any later sample.
In other words, they look like they have genes from Neandertals. And those genes declined in frequency or effect over time.
Info on specific genes coming soon....
clock | November 4, 2006I took a class with Dale Russell a few years ago. It was one of the most memorable classes ever, mainly because of Dale's overwhelming enthusiasm for the subjects of dinosaurs and evolution (as well as the coolest field-trip to the vaults of Carnegie Museum, getting to touch and hold and discuss fossils never seen by general public).
But I was always uneasy with Dale's overly-anthropomorphic depiction of 'alternative' evolution, i.e., what if dinosaurs did not go extinct. First of all, there is no reason to believe that anything as intelligent as us would ever have evolved. But even if it…
jstemwedel | November 4, 2006Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My adventures with John Wilkins at the PSA meeting in Vancouver continue. Last evening, Wilkins brought me to a reception where I had the pleasure of mingling with a great many philosophers who have made philosophical studies of various aspects of evolutionary biology. Strangely, these minglings were punctuated with camera flashes. Here I am trying to have a word with Robert Brandon as the paparazzi close in on us.
Here I am trying to catch up with Roberta Millstein (who blogged at the much-missed Philosophy of Biology) about her recent move to UC Davis…
pharyngula | November 4, 2006
This odd marine worm, Xenoturbella bocki, is in the news right now, and I had to look it up in Pechenik's Biology of the Invertebrates(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) to remind myself of what it was. Here's the complete entry:
Xenoturbella bocki
This marine worm, first described in 1949 as an acoel flatworm and later claimed as either an early metazoan offshoot or a primitive deuterostome, has recently been affiliated with primitive bivalve molluscs, based upon a study of gamete development (oogenesis) and an analysis of sequence data from both 18S rRNA and mitochondrial genes. Little is known about…
jrosenhouse | November 3, 2006I have two more installments planned for my Dawkins series, but I think I will hold them over to next week. Instead we really must pause to consider the latest example of mind-boggling ID sleaziness.
The story begins with Tim McGrew, a philosopher at Western Michigan University. In the comments section to this blog entry, McGrew wrote the following:
Let me rephrase that: Myers has changed Wells's wording and then has the temerity to accuse Wells of misleading the reader at the very point where Myers himself has made the change in Wells's words.
Let me put that more bluntly: Myers is lying…
jstemwedel | November 3, 2006Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My esteemed Panda's Thumb colleague John Wilkins invited me to attend the PSA meeting in Vancouver. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I agreed.
Last evening started pleasantly enough. I met Wilkins, John Lynch, Ben Cohen and David Ng, and Janet Stemwedel (from whose blog I am writing to you now) for refreshments. Yes, there was a bit of confusion when it turned out that the hotel didn't have an ice machine on every floor. As well, there was the puzzle of how properly to utilize the fresh limes for beverages in the absence of a knife. (The…
neurotopia | November 2, 2006Looks like creationist paragon of moral fortitude Kent Hovind might be headed to the slammer.
Kent Hovind is charged with 58 federal counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes and withholdings.
If found guilty, he faces a maximum of 288 years in prison. His wife, Jo Hovind, faces up to 225 years. Her charges include aiding and abetting her husband with 44 counts of evading bank-reporting requirements.
Don't drop the soap, Kent.
razib | November 1, 2006John Hawks says:
So keep on coming by -- I guarantee there will be some very interesting stuff in the next two months.
Things that make you go hhhmmm....
Well, go this symposium:
Salk Institute for Biological Studies DeHoffmann Auditorium
Friday, November 3, 2006
2:30 - 2:50: John Hawks, "Combining morphology and population genetics"
2:50 - 3:10: Henry Harpending, "Molecular genetics of modern humans and Neanderthals"
Details @ Hawks' place.
evolgen | November 1, 2006You 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 a bit too much. Isn't he married to a sex symbol?
evolvingthoughts | November 1, 2006
The living world, it seems to me, causes no end of trouble for those who would classify it. Its levels, ranks, hierarchies and units all seem to be clear enough, until we encounter troublesome cases. Then they get very troublesome indeed. So I want to say, there are no ranks or set units in biology a priori, and very few and limited, a posterori.
Suppose we take one instance: the "units of selection debate" that was so widely discussed after the publication of a number of seminal works in the 1960s and 1970s. Genes were held to be what evolved, against group selectionists who thought…
evolgen | November 1, 2006Sorry 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 seems to be in order. Darwinism appears under increasing challenge as 'creationism' and 'intelligent design' continue to creep into curricula, particularly in the US and the UK.
That quote comes from Nigel Williams's review of Brown's book. Williams writes for Current Biology, a widely read journal…