Molecular biology is not only a story of complex molecules, machines and processes but also of massive information flow via a variety of molecular messages. And while information flow is often associated with the DNA macromolecule, there are less celebrated but ubiquitous armies of molecular machines that are busy attaching, modifying and removing small chemical tags to and from both DNA and proteins. It is a massive information network and these chemical tags—such as methyl, hydroxyl and phosphate groups—act as a sort of molecular modifier or barcode regulating a diverse array of cellular functions. Another molecular barcode is the acetyl group, long thought to be mainly at work in eukaryotes, has now found to be important in bacteria as well. It is, Read More ›

Jerry Coyne has a Ph.D in evolutionary biology from Harvard.  Good for him.  Bad for everyone else, because Coyne wraps his opinions on non-scientific topics in the mantle of his academic credentials.  He seems to think his Ph.D in biology allows him to speak with authority on subjects about which he is clueless.  I caught Coyne at this when he spoke a couple of days ago on a topic about which I know a great deal and he apparently knows nothing – the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School.  In his blog “Why Evolution is True” Coyne writes: In 1999, two students in Columbine, Colorado went on a shooting rampage, killing 13 students and one teacher, and injuring another 24 before Read More ›

In the next video for the Engineering and Metaphysics conference, we have our keynote speaker, Walter Bradley, author of The Mystery of Life’s Origin (the book which kicked off the Intelligent Design movement). Here Bradley presents an overview of the cosmological case for design. Lots of interesting information from the man who started it all! There are a few breaks in the video due to tape changes. If you can’t see the embedded video, the YouTube URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLd_cPfysrE

Forget about Second City, Tempe’s newSomething From Nothingcomedy club is rocking with this hilarious spoof on evolutionary thought featuring Lawrence Krauss as the neurotic Rick Moranis and Richard Dawkins as the pompous Dave Thomas. It’s Sophism gone-wild as the Woody Allen and Bob Hope characters trade one fallacy after another over an ironically-placed stack of great books, all in front of the huge neon sign looming above assuring that it is all “Something From Nothing.” Meanwhile a sort of inverse teleprompter is recording their every precious word. The only thing missing was chapter and verse citations.  Read more

An very interesting study has now made the press cycle. Susanne Dobler and Anurag Agrawal studied the genetic mechanism employed by monarch butterflies to resist cardenolides, a powerful toxin which binds the cell’s sodium pump, and which is common to milkweed and foxgloves. They found that a single ” specific mutation — called N122H — of the Na,K-ATPase gene” was enough to confer resistance. They then looked in other insect lines to see what genetic mechanism was employed by these other lines. “Already knowing how monarchs deal with the toxin, we wanted to see if it was the same molecular solution used by beetles, flies and true bugs that are also resistant to cardenolides,” said Anurag Agrawal, a Cornell professor Read More ›

The vid is embedded here at 640 wide. Appealing to the WordPress gods to allow an embed here: [youtube 00vBqYDBW5s] And, let me clip the linked KF post: . . . Of course, there is a hot — and too often quite uncivil — controversy surrounding the inference to design on empirically tested signs such as complex, functionally specific organisation and associated information, or irreducibly complex functional organisation. However, much of that controversy is not driven by the actual balance on the merits but by the determination of institutionally dominant evolutionary materialist factions to retain their (now fast-crumbling) hold on science, the academy, education, most mass media, public policy and the public square. Sometimes, even the pulpit. If you doubt Read More ›