evolution
purepedantry | October 13, 2006Scientists have discovered a bacteria the survives with an incredibly small number of genes:
The tiniest genomes ever found belong to two types of bacteria that live inside insects, researchers have announced.
One of these types of bacteria, Carsonella ruddii, is so small that it could perhaps be considered an organelle within the cells of the bugs. But both microbe species face the threat of extinction because of their small genome size, experts say.
C. ruddii has the fewest genes of any cell known in the world - a mere 182, according to the new results. Humans, by comparison boast…
jrosenhouse | October 11, 2006The Autumn 2006 issue of The American Scholar features a lengthy article entitled, “Getting it All Wrong: Biolculture Critiques Cultural Critique. It's author is Brian Boyd, a professor of English at The University of Auckland in New Zealand.
The premise of the article is that English professors have rendered themselves irrelevant and even a bit silly by refusing to acknowledge the role of biology, especially evolution, in shaping human culture and knowledge. In particular that branch of study known as literary theory comes off looking foolish because it makes pronouncements completely…
evolgen | October 11, 2006Don't worry, this one has nothing to do with mtDNA.
There's been a bit of a hubbub recently in the ScienceBlogs community about science journalism. Sometimes we're a bit too hard on the journalists. In this week's issue of Nature, Robert Barton takes the journal to task for their coverage of the Pollard et al paper describing a rapidly evolving non RNA gene. Barton makes a good point at the beginning of his letter:
You state in your News story on genetic differences between humans and other species . . . that research is beginning to pin down genes that "evolved rapidly during the transition…
clock | October 11, 2006Meandering Musings on evolutionary psychology and many other things (from February 15, 2005)...
I remember when PZ Myers posted this exercise on his blog. The point was to show how much all of modern biology is based on and dependent on evolutionary theory because of oft-repeated bizzare claim by Creationists that this is not so.
Now Josh Rosenau has embarked on expanding this project and has started a pair of blogs just for this purpose. One blog, The Evolution Project will track recently published scientific papers that more or less explicitely are based on evolutionary theory, while its…
evolvingthoughts | October 9, 2006This is a really cool study. It's been known for some time that species of insects infected by the intracellular parasite Wolbachia are occasionally infertile with uninfected members of their own species, and hypothesised that this might cause speciation to occur. What nobody that I read, at any rate, seems to have thought is that this might in fact be the motivation for the uninfected females to change their mating behaviours. But so it seems it has, in the two species of Drosophila - subquinaria and recens - that cross the north American continent. The uninfected sister species, or perhaps…
pharyngula | October 9, 2006Carl Zimmer presents a timeline of the Homo floresiensis story, with a summary of the latest paper that casts doubt on its status as a legitimate species. Bottom line: it's still unsettled! As usual, the answer is only going to come from more digging and more data on the populations that lived on Ling Bua.
pharyngula | October 9, 2006Sometimes a plan just comes together beautifully. I'm flying off to London tomorrow, and on the day I get back to Morris, I'm supposed to lead a class discussion on the final chapters of this book we've been reading, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. I will at that point have a skull full of jet-lagged, exhausted mush, and I just know it's going to be a painful struggle. Now into my lap falls a wonderful gift.
There was a review in the NY Review of Books that said wonderful things about Carroll's work, and in particular about the revolutionary nature of evo-devo. This prompted Jason Hodin, an evo…
mikethemadbiologist | October 7, 2006The pro-science, anti-intelligent design creationism group Floridians for Science is writing a response to a creationist screed published in a Florida newspaper. Please stop by and help them draft their response.
purepedantry | October 6, 2006Here is your YouTube fun of the day. It is compilation of the Daily Show series Evolution Schmevolution from about a year ago I think. Hilarious.
neurotopia | October 6, 2006The Alliance for Science, in an effort to further dialogue between the science, religious,and business communities, is committed to bringing in a diverse network of speakers to its public meetings in the DC Metro area. Last year we had Dr. Peter Folger from the American Geophysical Union, Reverend Henry Green, ScienceBlog's own Chris Mooney, NCSE's Eugenie Scott, and AfS co-chair Paul Forbes to name a few. Now we're looking to a whole new year of fun with evolution education (yes, we're on an academic calendar...).
Next Thursday, October 12th, is speaker Michael Shermer. He will also have…
evolvingthoughts | October 5, 2006Well, put a collar on me and call me a bloodhound. It seems that dogs aren't wolves after all. Darren Naish, of Tetrapod Zoology, discusses a whole range of recent literature and the arguments for and against in a truly excellent post.
The arguments against note the morphological and behavioural differences between domestic dogs and wolves, and the fact that dogs when feral seem not to backbreed into wild wolf populations, a sure sign (well, relatively sure) that the two are distinct species. However, there has been some crossbreeding, which is what one might expect if dogs and wolves are…
clock | October 4, 2006From November 01, 2005, a review of a review...
Here is a nice article in Washington Post - Ecological Niche May Dictate Sleep Habits - about the adaptive function of sleep.
It addresses some of the themes I am interested in.
First, the unfortunate fact is that sleep was initially defined by researchers of humans, i.e., medical researchers. Inevitably, the (electrophysiological) definition of sleep was thus saddled with unneccessary anthropocentric elements that for decades hampered the study of evolution of sleep.
I was present at the meeting (here in Biotechnology Center in RTP) several…
clock | October 4, 2006In the light of this years' Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Chemistry (all RNA all the time), it would be interesting to think how would transcription, translation, gene regulation and replication work if DNA has evolved to be like this!?
clock | October 4, 2006For easy-to-understand quick look at the evolution of vision I have to refer you to these two posts by PZ Myers, this post of mine, and these two posts by Carl Zimmer.
Now, armed with all that knowledge, you will curely appreciate the importance of this new study:
Compound Eyes, Evolutionary Ties:
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the presence of a key protein in the compound eyes of the fruit fly (which glow at center due to a fluorescent protein) allows the formation of distinct light gathering units in each of its 800 unit eyes, an evolutionary…
clock | October 4, 2006In these days of global warming it is important to realize how important temperature is in regulation of a variety of biological processes. Here is today's sampler of examples:
Why Do Cold Animals Make Bigger Babies?:
Reproduction involves a critical decision: Should an organism invest energy in a few large offspring or many small ones? In a new study from the American Naturalist, biologists used a new statistical approach that can test multiple theories at the same time, an approach they hope will shed light on many evolutionary problems. They used data from many populations of Eastern…
evolvingthoughts | October 3, 2006On the one hand, we have the father of a student killed at Columbine blaming evolution for moral decay. On the other the killer in the Amish shooting was a home schooled Christian with sexual abuse issues. On the gripping hand, America has more murders per head than Japan, Australia, and the other nations that teach science to their kids (many of them actual democracies unlike the United States, which is a republic that, like ancient Rome, is turning into a tyranny) but which are less religious. So, what causes what? You decide...
evolgen | October 3, 2006
I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: humans are apes; apes, old world monkeys, and new world monkey are primates; and humans are primates. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
So you can guess how I reacted when I saw this advertisement as I was perusing the latest issue of Nature. Here is what they're pimping, an "Omics Gateway". You know how much I love -omics. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) tells us, "The Omics Gateway provides life scientists a convenient portal into publications relevant to large-scale biology from journals throughout NPG." It's a veritable omeome.
But they…
razib | October 3, 2006Two Catholic pubications touch upon evolution, first, Commonweal reviews kenotic theology, which seems to be entail (or at least align with) the necessity of evolution. I'm skeptical obviously, not being a believer, but it is an interesting idea and perhaps it will be attractive to some philosophically sophisticated believers (like panentheism). Second, The National Catholic Reporter reviews The Language of God by Francis Collins. This caught my attention:
As an alternative to creationism and intelligent design, Dr. Collins endorses the theory of theistic evolution, which accepts Darwin's…
pharyngula | October 3, 2006
How we sense the world has, ultimately, a cellular and molecular basis. We have these big brains that do amazingly sophisticated processing to interpret the flood of sensory information pouring in through our eyes, our skin, our ears, our noses…but when it gets right down to it, the proximate cause is the arrival of some chemical or mechanical or energetic stimulus at a cell, which then transforms the impact of the external world into ionic and electrical and chemical changes. This is a process called sensory signaling, or sensory signal transduction.
While we have multiple sensory…
mikethemadbiologist | October 3, 2006Inspired by this excellent post by Revere about the evolution of influenza, I've delved deep into the archives of the Mad Biologist, and summoned up some evolutionary thoughts of my own about influenza:
I meant to post something about evolution and influenza before my travels up north, but I was swamped by work and couldn't get to it. Thankfully, two colleagues, Carl Bergstrom and Marc Lipsitch, have decided to deal with Wendy Orent's faith-based virology. Orent writes (italics mine):
Indeed, a strictly enforced quarantine could do more harm than good. Herding large numbers of possibly…