Evolution

I Am Convinced That It Is The Light And The Way

This statement about natural selection is the last sentence of Adaptation and Natural Selection, George Williams' masterpiece about evolution. George Williams is one of the unsung heroes of 20th century science. An evolutionary biologist I know (who s ...

Article - John Dennehy - Mar 10 2009 - 4:33pm

The Platypus And The Evolution Of Genomic Imprinting

Show Me The Science Month Day 23 Installment 23 Thanks to your parents, you have two copies of each chromosome, which means that you have maternal and paternal copies of every gene. In most cases, having two copies of a gene is no problem, but in some cas ...

Article - Michael White - Mar 12 2009 - 5:57pm

Evolution Of New Genes In Flies

Show Me The Science Month Day 24 Installment 24 How do new genes arise? One common way is through gene duplication- the creation of a second copy of a gene when the DNA replication or repair machinery goes awry, followed by the the evolution of a new func ...

Article - Michael White - Mar 12 2009 - 5:11pm

Which Species Did Modern Great White Sharks Evolve From?

Want to start an argument among shark paleontologists?   Ask whether Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark, evolved from the line that produced Carcharodon megalodon, the largest carnivorous fish known, or from the broad-toothed mako shark. The mak ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 12 2009 - 11:22pm

Fungus Outsmarts Termite

Show Me The Science Month Day 25 Installment 25 In nature, there is a sucker born every day. We humans may think that we're clever, but evolution has produced con games that would put Bernie Madoff to shame. One common natural swindle is mimicry, whe ...

Article - Michael White - Mar 13 2009 - 3:12pm

Lynn Margulis, Neo-Darwinism, And Kin Selection

Professor Lynn Margulis is the biologist who had the incredible insight that the cells of modern organisms were originally formed by the symbiotic combination of prokaryotic cells and colonies of bacteria, and then had to battle for years to have this reco ...

Article - Steve Davis - Mar 20 2009 - 9:23am

Sufficient Complexity And Combinatorial Chemistry In Stars, Planets And Life

How did life begin, anyway?      I am a research professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and over the past 30 years my students and I have been working to understand how cellular life arose. The unit of all life today is the cell, a molecula ...

Article - Dave Deamer - Mar 25 2009 - 8:18pm

It's True, We're all Butt Heads

Humans belong to a sub-clasification of animals called deuterostomes (or second-mouth). During embryological development there is a period where part of the tissue “folds” back into itself creating what’s called a blastopore. The blastopore, in insects (a ...

Blog Post - Nicholas Horton - Mar 20 2009 - 1:01pm

Evolution 101

There is a conversation about evolution that I’m apparently doomed to replay over and over with various family members, friends and acquaintances. I tell a friend that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming- everywhere in biology you find the signature ...

Article - Michael White - Mar 20 2009 - 7:05pm

Mass Extinction Event? Don't Forget An Extra Pair Of Genes!

Weeds, trees or tomatoes; no matter the plant genome of interest, Yves Van de Peer and associate Bioinformaticians at the VIB-Ugent research institute repeatedly observe that the last genome duplication to have occurred in all extant plants happened at th ...

Article - Hayley Mann - Mar 26 2009 - 12:43pm