Genetics

Michael Behe, author of Darwin Devolves, responds to claims that he has misunderstood the polar bear: This is the first in a series of posts responding to the extended critique of Darwin Devolves by Richard Lenski at his blog, Telliamed Revisited. Professor Lenski is perhaps the most qualified scientist in the world to analyze the arguments of the book… The question Behe is addressing is whether a genetic adaptation in polar bears that enables them to live on a high-fat diet is actually a convenient loss rather than a gain. In much the same way, a broken side window might help you get into a house if you forget the key code. In extremely cold weather, that may save your Read More ›

It’s already been done. As a language, DNA can carry malicious messages: People often say that our genome is like a language. For example, a recent science paper explains that “genomes appear similar to natural language texts, and protein domains can be treated as analogs of words.”1 For that reason, DNA can be used to encode messages … But in some ways, our genomes are much more powerful than words. They are part of a process that utters not just ideas but living beings. Including human beings, who ourselves have ideas. In August 2017, researchers announced that they had used DNA to encode malware to hack a computer program that reads genetic sequences:More. Also at Mind Matters: How a computer Read More ›

In American Association for the Advancement of Science’s magazine, Science,  we read, In the grand scheme of evolution, mutations serve only to break structures and degrade functions, Behe argues. He allows that mutation and natural selection can explain species- and genus-level diversification, but only through the degradation of genes. Something else, he insists, is required for meaningful innovation. Here, Behe invokes a “purposeful design” by an “intelligent agent.” There are indeed many examples of loss-of-function mutations that are advantageous, but Behe is selective in his examples. He dedicates the better part of chapter 7 to discussing a 65,000-generation Escherichia coli experiment, emphasizing the many mutations that arose that degraded function—an expected mode of adaptation to a simple laboratory environment, by the Read More ›

The Y chromosome has been notoriously difficult to sequence due to repetitive elements. Junk, right? Now, researchers from the University of Rochester have found a way to sequence a large portion of the Y chromosome in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster—the most that the Y chromosome has been assembled in fruit flies. The research, published in the journal GENETICS, provides new insights into the processes that shape the Y chromosome, “and adds to the evidence that, far from a genetic wasteland, Y chromosomes are highly dynamic and have mechanisms to acquire and maintain genes,” says Amanda Larracuente, an assistant professor of biology at Rochester. Using sequence data generated by new technology that reads long strands of individual DNA molecules, Chang Read More ›

The CRISPR babies scientist has been fired. (If not worse.) From the news: “CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university” Investigation by Chinese authorities finds He Jiankui broke national regulations in his controversial work on gene-edited babies.” “He provoked international outcry last November when he revealed that he had used the gene-editing technique CRISPR– Cas9 to modify human embryos in an effort to make them resistant to HIV; the embryos were then implanted into a woman and produced twin girls, Nana and Lulu, in November. According to the investigation’s findings, He is fully to blame for the gene-editing project, and flouted regulations. (David Cyranoski, Nature) The girls’ father was HIV-positive. The main reason some of us forebore to dance on the guy’s Read More ›