Genetics
Four new grammar rules for DNA discovered
David L. Abel: “No nontrivial formal utility has ever been observed to arise as a result of either chance or necessity.”
Genetics: Sudden decline of native North Americans 500 years ago confirmed
Researchers claim suicide gene identified
Strictly Darwinian natural selection advocates end up psychoanalyzing voles
He said it: John Sanford gene gun inventor, on the rarity of beneficial mutations
Genetics: New find regarding how cells grow without division (polyploidy)
Neuroscience: Human gene expression changes in late life are quite dramatic – and NOT what researchers expected
Genetics: Can 100 100 year olds tell us how to live long?
Genetics: Bacteria can choose to distribute risk between offspring
An interesting new paper in human vs. chimp evolution
How do males avoid lethal defects without a second X chromosome?
Gene Duplication and the Origin of Novel Biological Information: A Case Study of the Globins
Those of us who have been involved with the discussion and debate surrounding ID/evolution for any significant length of time will be quite aquainted with the most fashionable neo-Darwinian model for the origin of novel biological information: Gene duplication and divergence. Gene duplications normally arise from a phenomenon known as “unequal cross-over”, which occurs during cell division. This process results in the deletion of a sequence in one strand, and its replacement with a duplication from its homologous chromosome (meiosis) or its sister chromatid (mitosis). The model of gene duplication and divergence essentially maintains that, following a gene duplication, while one copy of the gene retains its original function, the other copy is freed from selective constraint and is thus Read More ›
Human genes use a dual strategy of “prevention and cure” to deal with a type of error
From “Preventing Dangerous Nonsense in Human Gene Expression” (ScienceDaily, Oct. 14, 2011), we learn: Human genes are preferentially encoded by codons that are less likely to be mistranscribed (or “misread”) into a STOP codon. This finding by Brian Cusack and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and the CNRS in Lyon and Paris is published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. In biological systems, mistakes are made because the cellular machinery is complex and error prone. The errors made in copying DNA for transmission to offspring (genetic mutations) have so far been the primary focus of molecular evolution. But errors are much more frequent in the day-to-day task of gene expression, for example in the Read More ›