From ScienceDaily, we learn: “Enzymes for Cell Wall Synthesis Conserved Across Species Barriers” (July 14, 2011):
Due to its short lifecycle and biological simplicity, Arabidopsis is extremely useful for research, but lacks economic potential. Persson and his colleagues would therefore like to apply the knowledge gained from the research on this plant to other more economically important plant species. Read More ›
From “Environs Prompt Advantageous Gene Mutations as Plants Grow; Changes Passed to Progeny” (ScienceDaily, July 5, 2011) we learn:
If a person were to climb a towering redwood and take a sample from the top and a sample from the bottom of the tree, a comparison would show that the two DNA samples are different.Christopher A. Cullis, chair of biology at Case Western Reserve University, explains that this is the basis of his controversial research findings. Read More ›
At ScienceDaily (July 1, 2011), we learn, “Adult Stem Cells Carry Their Own Baggage: Epigenetics Guides Stem Cell Fate”:
Adult stem cells and progenitor cells may not come with a clean genetic slate after all. That’s because a new report in the FASEB Journal shows that adult stem or progenitor cells have their own unique “epigenetic signatures,” which change once a cell differentiates. This is important because epigenetic changes do not affect the actual make up in a cell’s DNA, but rather, how that DNA functions. Epigenetic changes have been shown to play a role in a wide range of diseases, including obesity, and have been shown to be heritable from mother to child.
Here’s an interesting take from a geneticist: Read More ›
That their existence is part of the foundation of Christianity. Anglican Curmudgeon usefully points out the reasons that an “evolutionary” interpretation of Christianity is impossible, citing atheist (and former Christian) Michael Ruse’s arguments in From Monad to Man: Let me be open. I think that evolution is a fact and that Darwinism rules triumphant. Natural selection is not simply an important mechanism. It is the only significant cause of permanent organic change. And that bias permeates his subsequent investigation into the conflicts, particularly when it comes to considering monogenism, the idea that current humans are the descendants of a single set of original parents. Citing the work of evolutionary biologist and Dominican priest Francisco Ayala, Ruse writes (pp. 75-76): Francisco Read More ›
“In Genetic Basis for Crime: A New Look” New York Times (June 19, 2011) , Patricia Cohen tells us
Researchers estimate that at least 100 studies have shown that genes play a role in crimes. “Very good methodological advances have meant that a wide range of genetic work is being done,” said John H. Laub, the director of the justice institute, who won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last week. He and others take pains to emphasize, however, that genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.
The subject still raises thorny ethical and policy questions.
In which case, these findings should – or should not – Read More ›
Specifically, the “genes” that make someone a bad driver or unfaithful spouse do not exist. Geneticist Steve Jones points out that we are just not finding the genes headline writers need.
2011 being the centenary of the death of Darwin’s cousin eugenicist Francis Galton (one consequence of Darwinism as a public religion is the innumerable saints’ days), British geneticist Steve Jones tackles the unlovely subject of “The man who drew up the ‘ugly map’ of Britain”* (BBC News , 16 June 2011), offering some interesting comments, especially on the role of popular media in creating an impression of genetic determinism which he says, folks, just ain’t there:
We know of more than 50 different genes associated with height.
That has not percolated into the public mind, as the Google search for “scientists find the gene for” shows. The three letter word for – the gene FOR something – is the most dangerous word in genetics. As Galton did not realise and as headline writers still do not, it is almost entirely ambiguous.
Yet far more people read headlines about the gay gene, the fat gene, and the “vote conservative” gene than read genetics papers. Read More ›
Here’s a story, “Leaky Genes Put Evolution on the Fast Track, Pitt and UW-Madison Researchers Find” (Eurekalert, Jun 15, 2011) where
The team traced the development of a unique feature in a species of fruit fly that began with low-level gene activity and became a distinct feature in a mere four mutations as an existing gene took on a new function, according to a report in PNAS
Slight changes in DNA transcriptional enhancers can activate dormant genetic imperfections, causing “leakiness” or low level activity in developing tissue that is different from the genes’ typical location. A few more mutations can result in “a new function for an old gene.” One such gene found its way to becoming a permanent fixture in the ban of a species of fruit fly. However, Read More ›
From “We Are All Mutants: First Direct Whole-Genome Measure of Human Mutation Predicts 60 New Mutations in Each of Us,” (ScienceDaily, June 12, 2011), a study involving four adults and one child, we learn: Each one of us receives approximately 60 new mutations in our genome from our parents. This striking value is reported in the first-ever direct measure of new mutations coming from mother and father in whole human genomes.[ … ] Mutations that occur in sperm or egg cells will be ‘new’ mutations not seen in our parents. Although most of our variety comes from reshuffling of genes from our parents, new mutations are the ultimate source from which new variation is drawn. Finding new mutations is extremely Read More ›
Senior scientist at the Biologic Institute, Ann Gauger, reflects on “Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails”, Evolution News & Views (June 1, 2011):
Up until now, the materialist, reductionist method has been very successful, because cells can be ground up, probed, measured and tested in a way that life forces or agency can’t be. But now molecular, cellular, and developmental biologists are drowning in a flood of data that we don’t know how to interpret. We do not know, for example, how to read a genome from an unknown new species to say what kind of organism it will produce. We can only determine what other genomes it most closely resembles. In order to predict the nature and appearance of the organism with that genome, we would need to know — just for starters — the maternal and paternal contributions to the egg and sperm, the whole of the developmental path from egg to adult, plus the particular effects of any mutations within that genome on its phenotype, not to mention its environmental history. Read More ›
Dennis Venema, Biologos’s senior fellow for science, and biology chair at Canada’s evangelical Trinity Western University, would have us know (p. 25) that the chimp genome(total genetic heredity encoded in DNA), which was fully mapped by 2005,displays “near identity”with the human genome as detailed by Collins’s team, with a 95 to 99 percent match depending on what factors are included. As Reasons to Believe biochemist Fuz Rana has pointed out (and he’s quoted), that would merely suggest that genes don’t count for much in determining what an entity will be like. As a result, the figure is widely disputed. Here’s geneticist Richard Buggs to start. More notes on Christianity Today’s “Darwin ‘n Jesus ‘n me” article here. The article here.
And many more! A friend writes to say, Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment , which was the first step in cracking the full 64-codon genetic code. The first codon that was cracked was that UUU=phenylalanine. And from The Scientist: On May 27, 1961, Heinrich Matthaei, a postdoc working with NIH scientist Marshal Nirenberg, placed synthetic polyuracil RNA into 20 test tubes to see what it would produce. Each tube contained cytoplasmic extract from Escherichia coli and a specific radiolabeled amino acid. Ribosomes from the tube containing labeled phenylalanine came back ‘hot,’ and the world was a step closer to understanding the genetic code. – Terry Sharrer, “Nirenberg’s Genetic Code Chart, 1961-66” (2007-06-01)
This charming tale, “Crocodiles swam the Atlantic to reach America” should be true, but some are undecided.
Michael Marshall explains for New Scientist (11 May 2011), “Millions of years before Vikings crossed the Atlantic, crocodiles swam thousands of kilometres from Africa to colonise the Americas,”
… all four American species are most closely related to the Nile crocodiles of east Africa, and must have split away roughly 7 million years ago, long after Africa and South America began drifting apart 130 million years ago. By 7 million years ago, over 2800 kilometres of ocean lay between the two continents.
And no rest stops? Read More ›
In “Zoologger: Clone army steals genes from other species” (New Scientist, 23 May 2011), Michael Marshall discusses the way clams steal genes from other clams. And how some life forms don’t have sex at all: The poster children for asexuality are bdelloid rotifers, tiny animals that have gone without sex for 80 million years. But they cheat: they steal swathes of genes from bacteria, fungi and plants. So … what about the assured results of scientific evolution theory? What can we certainly predict, other than that bdelloid rotifers will not become anything else, no matter whose genes they steal? But what would that mean for Darwinian evolution? For the theory of genes? Warning: Clam sex (or maybe not) discussed.
In “Out-of-Africa migration selected novelty-seeking genes” (New Scientist, 06 May 2011), Aria Pearson tells us, “AS HUMANS migrated out of Africa around 50,000 years ago and moved across the planet, evolution may have latched onto a gene linked to risk-taking and adventurousness.” Once treated skeptically, the idea “stands up to rigorous analysis,” due to minor differences in gene frequencies:
The study suggests that some small portion of the behaviours that characterise populations may be down to genetics, and that cultural actions like mass migration can modify our genes, says Matthews.
Marcus Munafò, a biological psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, cautions that variations in the DRD4 gene are numerous and complex, making its exact behavioural effects hard to pin down. But he agrees that it is likely that some differences in behaviour have been generated by genetic selection.
If a characteristic is usefully identified as genetic, shouldn’t it offer a stronger signal than this? And shouldn’t analysis be more rigorous than this? Read More ›
Of course, it was put there by a Canadian poet.
Recently we learned that “An original piece of “living poetry” has been created in a lab in Canada.” Christian Bok encoded some of his verse into a DNA strip and got it inserted into an E.coli bacterium:
Dr Bok used cryptography to embed his poem into the genetics of the bacterium, devising a chemical alphabet in which each letter is represented by a specific triplet of nucleotides. So, for example, the nucleotide sequence “ATA” codes for the letter “y” and GTG stands for the letter “n”.
– Rachael Buchanan, “Poet writes verse in bug’s genes and receives reply”, BBC News (28 April 2011).
Better: Read More ›