Genetics

From H. Allen Orr in “DNA: ‘The Power of the Beautiful Experiment,’” in a review of Matthew Cobb’s Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code (Basic Books)New York Review of Books: The “information” that is “encoded” in DNA gets “read” by cells. You likely didn’t notice because this is now a nearly reflexive way of talking about DNA, even in popular culture. It’s just obvious to us that DNA stores information—for curly hair or blue eyes—and it’s natural to think of it as an information storage device much like the hard disk of a computer. Yet one of Cobb’s main points is that this is a remarkably recent way of thinking about biology. True Then it gets Read More ›

From Sharon Begley at Stat: Although such behavioral genetics studies might once have been trumpeted as “genes for going to college,” the international consortium of 253 researchers reached a more modest conclusion: Altogether, the 74 genes explain slightly less than one-half of 1 percent of the differences between people’s education levels. “The authors are pretty careful to explain that the effect size is small [and] that these are not ‘genes for educational attainment,’” said Nita Farahany of Duke University School of Law, an expert on the ethical, legal, and social implications of behavioral genetics and a member of President Obama’s bioethics commission. “Whenever you study things close to IQ there is a real fear that people will see this as Read More ›

In response to “Mendel holds back genetics teaching,” a post on the way in which Nature is moving to quietly distance itself from today’s Darwinism, Jonathan Wells writes to say, Radick is right to criticize the gene-centric view that dominates modern biology, but the problem was not Gregor Mendel, who merely described patterns of inheritance for some traits in peas and never encouraged anything like a “genes-for” approach. Even Wilhelm Johannsen, who coined the word “genes,” regarded genes as abstractions. The problem came from the Darwinian materialists’ determination to reduce heredity to material particles on chromosomes. The materialists (most prominently Thomas Hunt Morgan) were the source of what Radick calls “the doctrinaire Mendelism that came later.” Poor Mendel. Sure. The big Read More ›

From Gregory Radick at Nature: The problem is that the Mendelian ‘genes for’ approach is increasingly seen as out of step with twenty-first-century biology. If we are to realize the potential of the genomic age, critics say, we must find new concepts and language better matched to variablebiological reality. This is important in education, where the reliance on simple examples may even promote an outmoded determinism about the power of genes. … What of Mendel? Some might complain that it is a poor anniversary gift to jettison him from his place of honour in the genetics curriculum. Let me suggest that this grumbling, although understandable, is misguided. If we want to honour Mendel, then let us read him seriously, which Read More ›

From The Scientist: Harvard Medical School’s George Church and his collaborators invited some 130 scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and government officials to Boston last week (May 10) to discuss the feasibility and implementation of a project to synthesize entire large genomes in vitro. … Church told STAT News that the original intention was to make the meeting open, but in anticipation of an imminent, high-profile publication on this project, he and his collaborators had to respect the journal’s embargo. However, Endy tweeted a photo of what appeared to be a message from the meeting organizers stating that they chose not to invite media “because we want everyone to speak freely and candidly without concerns about being misquoted or misinterpreted.” If genomes Read More ›

From Sarah Emerson at Motherboard: A team of geneticists from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine and the Centre for Genomic Regulation discovered that several billion years ago, the genetic code reached a point of self-preservation. Namely, it could continue evolving and risk mutating the building blocks of life it was responsible for creating, or it could remain limited, albeit functional. That was a really big decision an the genetic code must have been really mature to make it. Explorations into both primordial history and our genetically altered future can open the door for exciting innovations in the field of genetics. Evolution’s successes and failures can tell us more about our tenure as a species than any science-fiction manifesto. But Read More ›

“Directed mutations” means that the cell alters its own genome for its own protection, rather than simply being the recipient of random interventions. Here: APOBEC enzymes are thought to defend human cells against viruses by mutating them so they don’t work any more. Pinto et al. wondered if there might be evidence of APOBEC enzymes acting on human and ape genomes as well. Think of it as a sort of “collateral damage” in the war against viruses. In their survey, they found eight thousand unique clusters of mutations that look like APOBEC mutations in the human genome, as well as the genomes of Neandertal and Denisovans. They found almost a half million that were unique to the entire genus Homo. Read More ›

One thing we can all agree on is that the infamous finches on the Galápagos Islands are a classic icon of evolution. The difference is that evolutionists are playing the fool. Ever since Darwin wondered aloud that if the different types of finches he saw on the Galápagos Islands were not merely variants of a species, but in fact different species, then it “would undermine the stability of species,” and therefore the finches (and everything else) must have spontaneously arisen, evolutionists’ dullness has been embarrassing. Like the co-worker who reveals his ignorance as he rambles on about his pet peeve, evolutionists’ positivistic proclamations about the finches reveal an astonishing level of ignorance.  Read more

From ScienceDaily: Although it’s widely known that modern humans carry traces of Neanderthal DNA, a new international study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that Neanderthal Y-chromosome genes disappeared from the human genome long ago. Apparently, 2.5 to 4 percent of DNA sequences are thought be from Neanderthals. Question: Has anyone tried doing that with any other discrete group? Why is not yet clear. The Neanderthal Y chromosome genes could have simply drifted out of the human gene pool by chance over the millennia. Another possibility, said Mendez, is that Neanderthal Y chromosomes include genes that are incompatible with other human genes, and he and his colleagues have found evidence supporting this idea. Indeed, one Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Salamanders and fish possess genes that can enable healing of damaged tissue and even regrowth of missing limbs. The key to regeneration lies not only in the genes, but in the DNA sequences that regulate expression of those genes in response to an injury. Researchers have discovered regulatory sequences that they call ’tissue regeneration enhancer elements’ or TREEs, which can turn on genes in injury sites. … Over the last decade, researchers have identified dozens of regeneration genes in organisms like zebrafish, flies, and mice. For example, one molecule called neuregulin 1 can make heart muscle cells proliferate and others called fibroblast growth factors can promote the regeneration of a severed fin. Yet, Poss says, what has not Read More ›

Evolutionists are going to need a bigger rug as Yale professor Andrew Xiao now has a new pile of stuff he is absurdly trying to ascribe to evolution. Xiao’s team has confirmed that in mammals the fundamental epigenetic signal—the methyl group—is sometimes attached to a second type of DNA base. DNA is made up of four types of bases (cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] and thymine [T]) and, as in the lower species, methyl groups are sometimes attached to adenine in mammals as well.  Read more

When intelligent design is nuts From Phys.org: Lead researcher, Kendy Teng, from the University of Sydney, Australia, said, “Australians are favouring brachycephalic breeds, dogs with shorter and wider heads, such as the Pug and the French bulldog, more than those with longer and thinner heads. Looking at data spanning 28 years, we found that the demand for smaller dogs has increased every year from 1986.” “Veterinarians are concerned about brachycephalic dogs’ welfare, as these breeds commonly suffer from breathing difficulties, skin and eye conditions, and digestive disorders. In New Zealand, brachycephalic breeds are number four of the top five dog breeds considered by veterinarians to be unsuitable for continued breeding due to compromised health and welfare. We expect to see Read More ›

From Daily Mail: Ecologists, historians and geneticists from the TaurOs Programme hope to recreate the auroch by crossbreeding, or ‘back breeding’ modern cattle. Unlike in the work to resurrect the woolly mammoth, there is no need to use ancient DNA from well-preserved remains. Instead, the scientists identified ‘primitive’ breeds of cattle that share characteristics with their auroch ancestors, such as a tall and athletic build, long legs and forward curling horns to recapture the animal’s original purpose- to graze large areas of wilderness. They began the back breeding programme using seven varieties of cattle in 2009 and progress is being made. More. Interestingly, writer Sarah Griffiths is not throwing the word “species” around wildly. Good thing, because the best interpretation Read More ›

Says psychologist Oliver James at the Guardian: Low intelligence and high rates of mental illness are more common in poor people. Geneticists maintain that genes play a major role in causing both. But if they were right there would be an inexorable logic that suggests inferior DNA caused poor people to sink to the bottom of the gene pool. In the light of the findings of the human genome project, however, that idea is no longer defensible – as the leading psychologist Ken Richardson recently pointed out in the house magazine of the psychology profession. On the contrary, the implication of the unimportance of genes is that if we changed society in the right ways, we could virtually eradicate not Read More ›

Slowly making the public aware that a lot of those soapboxes are rotting. A bit at a time. From ScienceDaily, US National Institutes of Health wants us all to know this: Four ways inheritance is more complex than Mendel knew Today, we know that inheritance is far more complex than what Mendel saw in his pea plants. Our scientists who track progress in genetics research funded by NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences share some of the things researchers have learned about how traits are passed from one generation to the next. More. Listed are: 1. Some of our genes come only from Mom. 2. The environment may have the potential to trigger molecular changes that pass from generation to Read More ›