Category: Genetics
Did a broken gene improve running and help humans conquer the planet?
| September 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Humans apparently have a broken version of CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase (CMAH), which helps build a sugar molecule that impacts running: Despite our couch potato lifestyles, long-distance running is in our genes. A new study in mice pinpoints how a stretch of DNA likely turned our ancestors into marathoners, giving us the endurance to conquer territory, evade […]
Researchers: Genes cannot “be read like tea leaves”
| September 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Medicine |
Which make the effects of mutations harder to predict than hoped. Of course, it’s also a blow for genetic determinism. From ScienceDaily: Ever since the decoding of the human genome in 2003, genetic research has been focused heavily on understanding genes so that they could be read like tea leaves to predict an individual’s future […]
Bee genome changes dramatically through life
| September 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Epigenetics, Genetics |
Remember old-fashioned, unalterable DNA? It was interesting stuff. So now this: “A study of chemical tags on histone proteins hints at how the same genome can yield very different animals:” The bee genome has a superpower. Not only can the exact same DNA sequence yield three types of insect—worker, drone, and queen—that look and behave very […]
New “fixed” bacterial Tree of Life looks like a cityscape
| September 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Genomics, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
Seen from below: Professor Hugenholtz said the scientific community generally agrees that evolutionary relationships are the most natural way to classify organisms, but bacterial taxonomy is riddled with errors, due to historical difficulties. “This is mainly because microbial species have very few distinctive physical features, meaning that there are thousands of historically misclassified species,” he […]
“Perfect” fossil foal, 30-40 kya, found in Siberian permafrost
| August 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genetics, Genomics, Intelligent Design |
There were no external injuries. The fossil — discovered in the region of Yakutia — has its skin, hair, hooves and tail preserved. Yakutia is also famous for having found woolly mammoth fossils in the permafrost. Scientists from Russia’s Northeast Federal University, who presented the discovery Thursday, said the foal is estimated to be 30,000 […]
Does DNA testing keep alive ideas that “deserve to die”?
| August 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
An anthropologist asks: Now go even further back in time to the 17th or 18th century. The number of folks on average living then who could have contributed to your genetic endowment is so large (more than 1,000), and their possible genetic contribution so small (about 0.098 percent for 10 generations back), it would be smoke […]
Find deepens mystery of turtle’s origins
| August 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
From ScienceDaily: There are a couple of key features that make a turtle a turtle: its shell, for one, but also its toothless beak. A newly-discovered fossil turtle that lived 228 million years ago is shedding light on how modern turtles developed these traits. It had a beak, but while its body was Frisbee-shaped, its […]
“Junk DNA” regulates regeneration of tissues and organs
| August 22, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Darwinism, Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory and the University of Maine have discovered that genetic material in the cell that was previously thought to be “junk” because of its apparent lack of function likely plays a part in regulating genetic circuits responsible for regeneration in highly regenerative animals. … The discovery of these […]
Researchers: Genetic “information” is a key to trees surviving deadly beetle
| August 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genetics, Information, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: A University of Montana researcher has discovered that mountain pine beetles may avoid certain trees within a population they normally would kill due to genetics in the trees. UM Professor Diana Six made the discovery after studying mature whitebark and lodgepole trees that were the age and size that mountain pine beetle prefer, […]
The standard genetic code is “optimized” to reduce costly errors
| August 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Design inference, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
An interesting new paper on how the genetic code minimizes the impact of mistranslations: Statistical and biochemical studies of the standard genetic code (SGC) have found evidence that the impact of mistranslations is minimized in a way that erroneous codes are either synonymous or code for an amino acid with similar polarity as the originally […]
Does horizontal gene transfer enable genetic parasites to survive natural selection?
| August 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, horizontal gene transfer, Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
Researchers Iranzo and Koonin ask: Typically, natural selection results in deletions of harmful genes, so the main question is, why hasn’t natural selection wiped out genetic parasites? They mean “transposons, plasmids, viruses” etc., that offer no benefit to the hosts. They offer a hypothesis: In a new study published in EPL, researchers Jaime Iranzo and […]
Researchers: Program for limb development may have been in “in the bilaterian common ancestor”
| August 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Design inference, Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
What? Doug Axe draws attention to a new paper at Evolution News and Science Today which suggests that “the genetic program for limb development predates limbs.” Abstract: Cephalopod mollusks evolved numerous anatomical innovations, including specialized arms and tentacles, but little is known about the developmental mechanisms underlying the evolution of cephalopod limbs. Here we report that […]
Genetically engineering ethical humans…
| August 5, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Ethics, Eugenics etc, Freedom, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Mind |
… as the only way to save the species? From Bryan Walsh at Medium: “Our morality and our moral dispositions evolved to stop us from killing ourselves within our small group and to make sure that we cooperated with our small group,” says Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. […]
Researchers: FOXP2 is not the “language” gene
| August 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, language |
From ScienceDaily: “A paper published in 2002 (Enard et al., Nature 418, 869-872) claimed there was a selective sweep relatively recently in human evolutionary history that could largely account for our linguistic abilities and even help explain how modern humans were able to flourish so rapidly in Africa within the last 50-100,000 years,” says senior […]
Researchers: Jumping genes time their activity, await opportunity
| July 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Design inference, Genetics |
From ScienceDaily: Researchers have developed new techniques to track the mobilization of jumping genes. They found that during a particular period of egg development, a group of jumping-genes called retrotransposons hijacks special cells called nurse cells that nurture the developing eggs. These jumping genes use nurse cells to produce invasive material (copies of themselves called […]
Mystery: Unisexual salamander species did not turn out to need much genetic diversity
| July 27, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: The reproductive history of the unisexual, ladies-only salamander species is full of evolutionary surprises. In a new study, a team of researchers at The Ohio State University traced the animals’ genetic history back 3.4 million years and found some head-scratching details — primarily that they seem to have gone for millions of years […]
Different psychiatric disorders linked to the same genes?
| July 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Intelligent Design, Medicine, Psychology |
From Mark Fischetti at Scientific American: Bipolar disorder, for example, was more similar to schizophrenia than to major depression even though clinicians may link bipolar disorder and depression, based on their symptoms. These insights could possibly reveal new treatments, says neurogeneticist Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the investigators. More. […]
At PLOS: “Genes – way weirder than you thought”
| July 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Genetics, Intelligent Design |
From Mike Klymkowsky at PLOS: Through his studies on peas, Gregor Mendel was the first to clearly identify some of the rules for the behavior of these inheritable factors using highly stereotyped, and essentially discontinuous traits – a pea was either yellow or green, wrinkled or smooth. Such traits, while they exist in other organisms, […]
Monkeys more closely related to sister species than same species in different locations?
| July 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics, Intelligent Design, speciation |
The “biological species concept” is yet another textbook dead zone. From ScienceDaily: Dr Addisu Mekonnen and colleagues at The University of Oslo, Norway, looked at the genetic diversity of the two populations of Bale monkeys. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggested strong genetic differences between the Bale monkeys who lived in continuous forests or fragmented forests. […]
Girl got mostly a double set of her dad’s genes, is almost his twin
| July 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Genetics |
From Dan Vergano at Buzzfeed: When she was 9 years old, a genetic test revealed that she had two identical copies of a rare gene. At first, the scientists thought it was extremely bad luck, inheriting the same super-rare gene twice, once from each parent. But as it turned out, the rare gene was, “surprisingly, […]
