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Evolutionary biology

At SciTech Daily: Extraterrestrial Life: Ancient Microbes May Help Us Find Alien Life Forms

Researchers: “Early Earth is an alien environment compared to our world today. Understanding how organisms here have changed with time and in different environments is going to teach us crucial things about how to search for and recognize life elsewhere,” Read More ›

At Live Science: ‘Unlucky’ creatures that enter rare Red Sea brine pools are immediately stunned to death

Researcher: "Deep-sea brine pools are a great analog for the early Earth and, despite being devoid of oxygen and hypersaline, are teeming with a rich community of so-called 'extremophile' microbes." Read More ›

At Phys.org: To keep up with evolving prey, rattlesnakes tap genetically diverse venom toolbox

University of Colorado at Boulder: "This research overturns decades of thought on what factors shape venom gene evolution and venom variation, and sheds new light on why developing effective antivenom treatments for snakebites remains so challenging." Read More ›

At Evolution News: From Darwinists, a Shift in Tone on Nanomachines

Unfortunately for Darwinists, irreducible complexity raises real doubts about Darwinism in people’s minds. Rising to the challenge, Darwinists are doing what must be done to control the damage. Read More ›

The Death of Neutral Theory

In today’s Nature, we find this article: “Synonymous mutations in representative yeast genes are mostly strongly non-neutral.” They investigated what effect “synonymous, nonsynonymous and nonsense” mutations involving “21 endogenous genes” would have on yeast. The fitness levels of synonymous and nonsynonymous fell in equal (though not ‘identical’) measure–around 75%. I don’t have access to the article itself, only the abstract. The abstract begins thusly: Synonymous mutations in protein-coding genes do not alter protein sequences and are thus generally presumed to be neutral or nearly neutral[1,2,3,4,5] 1 through 5 are citations. Who are they: Kimura, King and Jukes, Nei and Kumar, Li and Dan Graur. The heavyweights of neutral theory. The abstract ends: The strong non-neutrality of most synonymous mutations, if Read More ›

Another Truism Dies

A new paper can be found at Phys.Org undermining the idea that what drives evolution is the “decoupling” of DNA with phylogenic structures. This idea is implicit in the twin ideas of pseudogenes and gene duplication: both allow the DNA to become “uncoupled” from the structures they code for and so RM becomes permissible. Well, this paper shuts down this idea. Given the success of cichlids, understanding the evolution of these two jaws has become an important line of inquiry for biologists. “We’re trying to gain a better understanding of the origins and maintenance of biodiversity,” says Albertson. Researchers have long thought that the two sets of jaws are evolutionarily decoupled and can evolve independently of one another, pushing the Read More ›

New Video Presentation on YouTube: Intelligent Design & Scientific Conservatism

I have recently posted a new video on my Intelligent Design YouTube channel. In this video I discuss several areas in the philosophy of science and modern evolutionary biology, and their relationship to ID. These thoughts were prompted initially by an interesting paper by philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design, and Two Good Ones’. Koperski thinks that one good way to critique ID is to point out that it violates principles like ‘scientific conservatism’. Because there are several potential naturalistic mechanisms on the table, even if orthodox neo-Darwinism fails, ID is an unnecessary proposal. To turn to design explanations would be to adjust our theories too drastically. I argue against this claim, concluding that Read More ›

Cane toads: At a certain point, “evolution” becomes an excuse for not thinking clearly

At Nature: “Study finds that the noxious pests have become so numerous, they’ve developed a taste for each other — as well as defences to ward off such attacks”: The discovery could help researchers to understand the evolutionary underpinnings of how this uncommon and extreme behaviour emerges. Scientists have seen cannibalism evolve in species before, says Volker Rudolf, a community ecologist at Rice University in Texas, who studies the phenomenon. But what’s exciting about this work, he says, is that the researchers are almost seeing it “develop in front of their eyes”, given that the behaviour arose in less than a hundred years — the blink of an eye by evolutionary standards… Although adult cane toads are fearsome — they Read More ›

Bret Weinstein now smeared at Wikipedia?

Readers may well remember biology teacher Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, a progressive teacher couple at Evergreen State College, early victims of the very Woke they had themselves encouraged, without realizing where it must end. Read More ›

Video Presentation: Why the Debate Over Intelligent Design Really Matters

I have recently posted a new video presentation on my YouTube channel. In the video I talk about some of the reasons why I think the debate over Intelligent Design and biological origins is of great significance. Aside from just being a fascinating area, it has many implications in several areas of life. This video, while far from perfect, is a big step up from my last few videos. I’ve done a fair amount of editing on this one, and took time to make it a little more professional, with music, slides, and photos. I hope you enjoy it, and it gets you thinking a little about why this topic is of importance to you also. Why the Question of Read More ›