A friend tells us that Michael Lynch of the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State) has argued that the spliceosome is so complex, because it just couldn’t help being that way. Here’s a question: How did such an explanation get to be called “science”?
Genetics
Squid self-edit their genomes
Open access: Abstract: In eukaryotic cells, with the exception of the specialized genomes of mitochondria and plastids, all genetic information is sequestered within the nucleus. This arrangement imposes constraints on how the information can be tailored for different cellular regions, particularly in cells with complex morphologies like neurons. Although messenger RNAs (mRNAs), and the proteins Read More…
Ancient human lineages as tangled trees
Those people probably didn’t know that they were supposed to organize their lives for the convenience of future researchers. 😉
Could we bring back extinct plants?
So far a Siberian flower and a date palm have been brought back. The idea is that restoring n extinct animal like the woolly mammoth would just be a curiosity but some of these plants may be staple foods or useful medicines.
Might COVID-19 be a recombinant of two pre-existing viruses?
Presumably, viruses don’t need to follow rules of heredity.
At Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable: The scientific case for Adam and Eve
“He [Swamidass] is joined by atheist biologist Nathan Lents who has given his support to the book, believing that it may help Christians who hold to a traditional understanding of the Adam and Eve story, to also accept evolutionary science. “
Expert contra Dawkins, why eugenics wouldn’t really work
David Curtis: We can now measure genetic potential directly from genetic markers and what we know from this is that these genetic predictors perform extremely badly. We can also tell that there are many important, very rare genetic variants which we will never be able to identify.
Jerry Coyne jumps into the Dawkins eugenics row
Contrary to Coyne’s and Dawkin’s claims, dog breeding is DEvolution for dogs. It usually works that way, as Michael Behe points out in Darwin Devolves. Dogs are bred by humans at the expense of their genetic health.
Even sperm are “fine-tuned”? What now, Darwin?
Look, if they can’t even sell Darwinism to sperm, they need PR 911 pronto.
Ghost worms unchanged in form for 275 million years but show “highly distinct” genetics?
One wants to ask, how distinct ARE the genomes of these species that all look the same?
Would it be like mapping a cat’s genome and finding a German Shepherd’s GATTACA in there? What that level of distinction really tells us goes well beyond cats and German Shepherds. Or do the researchers really mean something less highly distinct? What? We search for analogies here.
Predictions, predictions: ID predicts overlapping codes, Darwinism predicts “junk DNA”
The nested hierarchies we find in codes point to an intelligence behind nature.
At The Scientist: “Junk RNA” is top science news in 2019
A “completely unknown biology,” says a researcher. “There really is no framework in biology as we know it today that would explain how RNA and glycans could ever be in the same place at the same time”
One of the biggest science stories of the last decade: The Descent of Man gets crowdsourced
Those old Descent of Man charts were sometimes fun, showing a bacterium ending up as some poor slob hunched over a workstation. Some sort of moral was always pounded into us by these tales, usually not an uplifting one. But real history is always better and more interesting.
The Man With Two Fingerprints also has his donor’s semen
Well first, as commenter Latemarch put it at the previous story, “He is still the same “person.” His DNA has changed but he’s still the same person. Another blow to materialism…think about it.”
The larger lesson from the story of the Man With Two Fingerprints
Remember when DNA was Certain? When people were executed or spent life in prison on account of DNA evidence? “Your DNA is on it” was like Holy Writ. DNA was the guarantor of the Darwinian selfish gene.
And now… The worst thing that ever happened to Darwinism was DNA mapping.