We see devolution all the time with unintelligent causes. Animals gnaw a hole in the bottom of a jug of water and they get some water but the rest is wasted. They destroy the feedhouse door trying to get into the feed because they don’t know how to use the doorhandle. They do get fed but the feed is scattered and much is wasted. *That’s what an unintelligent cause is typically like.* Put another way, the animals won’t learn to use the doorhandle or the jug cap. But just to survive and reproduce, they might not need to.
Genetics
Epigenetics silences cancer-linked genes from 400 million years ago
The main thing we’re learning these days is that epigenetics is much more important than we used to think. Which means that purely Darwinian evolution must be much less so.
Researchers: Body plan evolution not so simple as once thought
The Hox genes are not the big answer many thought.
Nobody went downhill faster than DNA
Remember when everything you ever were or would be was
in your DNA? Now it’s proteins.
Can one apply the “Goldilocks Principle” of fine-tuning to DNA structure?
From what these researchers report, yes, one can definitely apply the principle. But then one must accept that biology shows evidence of design. “Just right” is rarely an accident.
The same genes code for legs as for tentacles
The folks at Nature will be back to us when they come up with a no-design story.
Why describing DNA as “software” doesn’t really work
Check out Science Uprising 3. In contemporary culture, we are asked to believe – in an impressive break with observed reality – that the code of life wrote itself: … mainstream studies are funded, some perhaps with tax money, on why so many people don’t “believe in” evolution (as the creation story of materialism). The […]
What if there is no genetics apart from epigenetics?
Talbott: Not that the gene sequences are themselves mutated in the usual sense. Rather, the researchers found that various epigenetic modifications in the hippocampus alter the way the genes work (Weaver et al. 2004).
Researchers: Gene translation “much more complex than previously thought”
We keep learning about a variety of life forms that they are “more complex than expected.” So why do we keep expecting them to be simpler? How be we turn it around and say: Such-and-so features layers on layers of complexity, as we expected.
Supposed junk DNA serves as microlens for condensing light
A new study, we are told,”turns our picture of the nucleus upside down”.
Clusters of human body cells have different genomes
Remember the Selfish Gene? Aw, he was just playin’ you guys. You didn’t fall for that, did you?
The new “unique human genes” findings contradict previous research
Researchers: The finding contradicts earlier research, which stated that almost all of human and fruit fly TFs bind the same motif sequences, and is a call for caution to scientists hoping to draw insights about human TFs by only studying their counterparts in simpler organisms.
How maize corn’s wild ancestor teosinte prevents maize from breeding with it
The researchers don’t hazard a guess as to why the wild plant rejects its descendant. It’s tempting to liken it to a wolf pack chasing away a stray dog (if not outright killing him). Interesting development.
Remember junk RNA? Cell division requires a balanced level of it
Researcher: These non-coding RNAs are once considered as “junk”. In recent years, however, researches have revealed vital roles of non-coding RNA, such as in gene regulation and maintaining chromosome structure
When did the folk at Skeptical Inquirer become creationists?
Their story, a reader points out, ” shockingly, includes this quote: “And if you could get in a time machine and travel back a few thousand years, you could find someone who was a common ancestor of all living people on Earth.””