Evolution

Less Random Fitness: A Refined Biological Evolution Model

Models for the evolution of life are now being developed to try and clarify the long term dynamics of an evolving system of species. Specifically, a recent model proposed by Petri Kärenlampi from the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu accounts for s ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 21 2014 - 3:00pm

Leftover Primordial Soup: The 4 Billion Year Old Chemistry Still In Our Cells Today

Parts of the primordial soup in which life arose have been maintained in our cells today, according to a new paper. The articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry  discusses how cells in plants, yeast and very likely also in animals still perform anc ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 25 2014 - 9:48am

Does RNA Have Memory? Genes May Remember Starvation

During the winter of 1944, the Nazis blocked food supplies to the western Netherlands, creating a period of widespread famine and devastation. The impact of starvation on expectant mothers were also an epigenetic experiment — a way to monitor changes resu ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 1 2014 - 6:00am

Lucinids: 400 Million Years Of Symbiotic Survival

One of the most diverse families in the ocean today, marine bivalve mollusks- called Lucinidae or lucinids- originated more than 400 million years ago in the Silurian period, with adaptations and life habits like those of its modern members.  About 500 lu ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 1 2014 - 8:46am

Tooth Evolution Reproduced By Manipulating Embryonic Development Of Mice

Researchers have been able to experimentally reproduce morphological changes in mice which have taken millions of years to occur. Through small and gradual modifications in the embryonic development of mice teeth, induced in the laboratory, they obtained t ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 1 2014 - 5:43pm

Influenced Evolution- 6 Generations To Change Butterfly Wing Color

Researchers working on biomimicry have produced the first structural color change in an animal by influencing evolution: They've changed the color of the butterfly Bicyclus anynana from brown to violet- and needed only six generations of selection to ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 8 2014 - 7:00am

Rangeomorphs: How Some Of The Earliest Animals Lived And Died

Rangeomorphs were unlike any modern organism, which has made it difficult to determine how they fed, grew or reproduced, and therefore difficult to link them to any particular modern group. They looked like plants but evidence points to the fact that rang ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 11 2014 - 4:42pm

The Math Of Biology And LUCA's Leaky Membrane

Descent with modification means that all life on Earth probably came from one common ancestor – a single-celled organism – We just have to speculate and create models for what it may have looked like, how it lived and how it evolved into today's mode ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 12 2014 - 3:00pm

Pygmy Phenotype Adapted To Rainforest, But They're Not All The Same

The small body size associated with the African pygmy phenotype is probably a selective adaptation for rainforest hunter-gatherers, according to a new study, but since all African pygmy phenotypes do not have the same genetic underpinning it is likely a m ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 18 2014 - 5:00pm

Sympatric Speciation: Ant Evidence For Alternate Mechanism Of Species Formation

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Article - News Staff - Aug 21 2014 - 2:02pm