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, not in her mother,” wrote the scientific team, led by Irena Borgulová of the Centre for Medical Genetics and Reproductive Medicine Gennet in Prague. Which meant she had inherited two copies of her father’s gene. Subsequent testing showed that it wasn’t just that one gene — she had doubled up on her father’s genes in almost all of her chromosomes in most of her cells. Read More ›

Abstract: Seventeen years after the sequencing of the human genome, the human proteome is still under revision. One in eight of the 22 210 coding genes listed by the Ensembl/GENCODE, RefSeq and UniProtKB reference databases are annotated differently across the three sets. We have carried out an in-depth investigation on the 2764 genes classified as coding by one or more sets of manual curators and not coding by others. Data from large-scale genetic variation analyses suggests that most are not under protein-like purifying selection and so are unlikely to code for functional proteins. A further 1470 genes annotated as coding in all three reference sets have characteristics that are typical of non-coding genes or pseudogenes. These potential non-coding genes also Read More ›

With Philip Cunningham Philip Cunningham writes to say, “As the preceding e-mails strongly indicated, Biological Form simply is not reducible to Darwinian Mechanisms” Paper. See also: Do all genes affect every complex trait? Veronique Greenwood: The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way… and Other bad news from the genome for neo-Darwinism From Philip Cunningham: The paper makes the genotype-phenotype mapping problem that much worse for neo-Darwinists. Here are few notes to that throw a little light on how bad the problem is.

Philip Cunningham hat tipped us earlier on the article at Quartz that raised the possibility that all genes affect every complex trait. He also writes to say, “The paper makes the genotype-phenotype mapping problem that much worse for neo-Darwinists. Here are few notes to that throw a little light on how bad the problem is:” These news items from recent years give some sense of the issues, he says: The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology (Bard, 2011) Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this Read More ›

The more closely geneticists look at complex traits and diseases, the harder it gets to find active genes that don’t influence them. From Veronique Greenwood at Quanta: Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis. But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way… One very early genetic mapping study in 1999 suggested that “a large number of loci (perhaps > than 15)” might contribute to autism Read More ›

Michael Behe’s new book at Amazon: Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA that Challenges Evolution is due February 26, 2019. No cover image as yet. From HarperOne: The scientist who has been dubbed the “Father of Intelligent Design” and author of the groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box contends that recent scientific discoveries further disprove Darwinism and strengthen the case for an intelligent creator. In his controversial bestseller Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that science itself has proven that intelligent design is a better explanation for the origin of life. In Darwin Devolves, Behe advances his argument, presenting new research that offers a startling reconsideration of how Darwin’s mechanism works, weakening the theory’s validity Read More ›

From Gerd Bossinger and Antanas Spokevicius at Phys.org: From ancient European beech trees to gigantic Californian redwoods and Australian mountain ashes, new research has found the enormous trunks of these trees are all formed from a single layer of cells no wider than the tip of a needle. … Wood is one of the world’s most important renewable resources, so you’d think we’d have an understanding of how it grows. But until now we didn’t know exactly how cells within the vascular cambium go about their business. The number of cell layers that make up the vascular cambium, and to what degree the fate of individual cells within the cambium is predetermined, has been a matter of debate for over Read More ›

The discovery of complex organic molecules on Saturn’s moon Enceladus raises the question:What about introducing organisms from Earth, even if none exist out there now? From Laurie Fickman at the University of Houston: In professor George Fox’s lab at the University of Houston, scientists are studying Earth germs that could be contaminating other planets. Despite extreme decontamination efforts, bacterial spores from Earth still manage to find their way into outer space aboard spacecraft. Fox and his team are examining how and why some spores elude decontamination. Their research is published in “BMC Microbiology.” To gain access into the uber-sanitized clean rooms at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the world’s largest clean room, or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Read More ›

This was discovered by someone who was skeptical of the idea that our geomes are largely useless junk. From Nicholas Weiler at Phys.Org: A so-called “jumping gene” that researchers long considered either genetic junk or a pernicious parasite is actually a critical regulator of the first stages of embryonic development, according to a new study in mice led by UC San Francisco scientists and published June 21, 2018 in Cell. Only about 1 percent of the human genome encodes proteins, and researchers have long debated what the other 99 percent is good for. Many of these non–protein coding regions are known to contain important regulatory elements that orchestrate gene activity, but others are thought to be evolutionary garbage that is Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST, on Darwinism and the recent find that junk DNA can alter genitalia: The “junk” view, once a prized piece of evidence for neo-Darwinian theory, is thus reduced to the province of the benighted, the reactionaries who “still refer to [it] as ‘junk’ DNA,” after science has already passed them by. Having volumes of garbage lying around was a logical prediction of Darwinism that is in the process of being falsified. Now, it seems likely that non-coding regions have not trivial but “drastic effects.” This reversal helps explain why evolutionists like Richard Dawkins have radically revised a key claim. Dawkins himself, in the space of three years, went from assuring us that junk validates Darwinism to claiming Read More ›

From Cassandra Willyard at Nature: Since 2000, estimates have ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. The latest attempt to plug that gap uses data from hundreds of human tissue samples and was posted on the BioRxiv preprint server on 29 May1. It includes almost 5,000 genes that haven’t previously been spotted — among them nearly 1,200 that carry instructions for making proteins. And the overall tally of more than 21,000 protein-coding genes is a substantial jump from previous estimates, which put the figure at around 20,000. But many geneticists aren’t yet convinced that all the newly proposed genes will stand up to close scrutiny. Their criticisms underscore just how difficult it is to identify new genes, or Read More ›

It’s risky. The church splitter (fundamentalism) vs. the church closer (theistic evolution). William Lane Craig writes: Two challenges to this doctrine arise from modern science, one fairly old and the other very recent. … I am currently exploring the genetic evidence that is said to rule out an original pair of modern humans. In talking with genetic scientists, I’ve found that there is enormous confusion about this question today. Popularizers have misrepresented the arguments, thereby inviting misguided responses. The issues are very technical and difficult to understand. I’m just beginning to get my feet wet and don’t want to misrepresent the science. I want to know how firm the evidence is and what it would cost intellectually to maintain the Read More ›

From Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health: Pro-GMO Professor Fired for Endorsing Glyphosate David Zaruk is an expert in European Union regulations and risk communication. He writes a blog, titled The Risk-Monger, which largely examines regulatory issues involving biotechnology, such as GMOs and glyphosate. For nearly a decade, he also was an adjunct professor of communications at Université Saint-Louis in Brussels, Belgium. As Dr. Zaruk writes in a lengthy blog post, he recently lost his job from the university. Why? According to Dr. Zaruk, it’s because he is avidly pro-biotechnology and another professor (at a different university!) didn’t like it. So, he pulled a few strings and got Dr. Zaruk fired. It should be noted that Olivier Read More ›

A friend writes to mention this page (2016) at National Center for Biotechnology Information: — The following genetic codes are described here: 1. The Standard Code 2. The Vertebrate Mitochondrial Code 3. The Yeast Mitochondrial Code 4. The Mold, Protozoan, and Coelenterate Mitochondrial Code and the Mycoplasma/Spiroplasma Code 5. The Invertebrate Mitochondrial Code 6. The Ciliate, Dasycladacean and Hexamita Nuclear Code 9. The Echinoderm and Flatworm Mitochondrial Code 10. The Euplotid Nuclear Code 11. The Bacterial, Archaeal and Plant Plastid Code 12. The Alternative Yeast Nuclear Code 13. The Ascidian Mitochondrial Code 14. The Alternative Flatworm Mitochondrial Code 16. Chlorophycean Mitochondrial Code 21. Trematode Mitochondrial Code 22. Scenedesmus obliquus Mitochondrial Code 23. Thraustochytrium Mitochondrial Code 24. Pterobranchia Mitochondrial Code 25. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The Dyeing Dart Frog, for example, is highly toxic and warns its predators with a bright yellow-and-black pattern. However, new research led by scientists at the University of Bristol has revealed that the colour pattern does more than simply signal “danger.” Counterintuitively, it also works as camouflage. … “Certain predators have evolved tolerance of toxins that would be deadly for humans, and some individual predators may have not encountered the warning signal prey before (a dangerous mistake for the predator, but also for the frog). … “So, colour patterns that could be distinctive close-up, but work as camouflage from a distance, would provide a clear advantage.” … They found that, despite being highly conspicuous at close range, the Read More ›