Category: Genomics
The common Asian toad is actually three “species”
| February 17, 2016 | Posted by News under Genomics, News, speciation |
From ScienceDaily: A research project has tested the hypothesis that Asian common toad populations across Southeast Asia are genetically similar owing to their commensal nature and high dispersive ability. To the researchers’ surprise, three genetically divergent groups of toads were found, each in a different geographic area (mainland Southeast Asia, coastal Myanmar and the islands […]
Genes that come from nowhere? So it seems.
| February 17, 2016 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genetics, Genomics, News |
Ann Gauger on “de novo” genes at Evolution News & Views: De novo genes are genes that are present in a particular species or taxonomic group, and not present in any others. Why are they there and where did they come from? To answer these questions we have to first deal with some important assumptions […]
Is “race” a justified category for grouping humans?
| February 17, 2016 | Posted by News under Culture, Genetics, Genomics, Intelligent Design, News |
From Sharon Begley at Stat News (“reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine”): ore than a decade after leading geneticists argued that race is not a true biological category, many studies continue to use it, harming scientific understanding and possibly patients, researchers argued in a provocative essay in Science on Thursday. “We thought that […]
What happens when chickens go wild?
| January 21, 2016 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics, News |
From Nature: Opaekaa Falls, like much of Kauai, is teeming with feral chickens — free-ranging fowl related both to the domestic breeds that lay eggs or produce meat for supermarket shelves and to a more ancestral lineage imported to Hawaii hundreds of years ago. … The process of domestication has moulded animals and their genomes […]
Of proteins and buttercups, and evolving new functions
| January 11, 2016 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics, News |
Commenting on a recent PLOS paper, Ann Gauger writes at Evolution News & Views, A recent paper in PLOS Genetics considers the origins of new “genes” in humans and chimps. By comparing RNA sequences, researchers identified over 600 transcriptionally active “genes” that appear to be present only in humans and not in chimps or the […]
Mutations Degrade Inherited Intelligence
| December 22, 2015 | Posted by DLH under Biology, Complex Specified Information, Darwinism, Evolution, Genetics, Genomics, Human evolution, Information, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Mind, The Design of Life |
The remarkable “powers” of evolution are now shown to degrade (aka “mutate”) the human genes essential to intelligence. Remarkably, they found that some of the same genes that influence human intelligence in healthy people were also the same genes that cause impaired cognitive ability and epilepsy when mutated, networks which they called M1 and M3.
Trusting these people to edit the human genome…
| December 5, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, News |
… is like trusting five-year-olds to edit the Constitution From International Conference on Human Gene Editing (A Global Summit): It would be irresponsible to proceed with any clinical use of germline editing unless and until (i) the relevant safety and efficacy issues have been resolved, based on appropriate understanding and balancing of risks, potential benefits, […]
Did farming change the human genome?
| November 28, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, News |
Did farming change the human genome? If so, the genome has certainly been a work in rapid progress, and maybe regress too From : Genomic analysis of ancient human remains identifies specific genes that changed during and after the transition in Europe from hunting and gathering to farming about 8,500 years ago. Many of the […]
We hesitated to bring you the Frankenflatworm …
| November 27, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design, News, speciation |
… but well, it’s Friday night … From LiveScience: Call them Franken flatworms. Scientists have created worms with the heads and brains of other species just by manipulating cell communication. The research is an example of how development is controlled by more than genetics alone. The researchers did not alter the flatworms’ DNA in any […]
Pond hydra can modify its own genetic program
| November 25, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design, News |
But then this is the same life form that can reassemble from a small piece, and lose all its neurons but live. Re the latter feat, new findings may shed light: From Science Daily: Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from any fragment of its body. It […]
Stanford U: Ancient viruses are part of us and we need them
| November 25, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Human evolution, News |
From The Telegraph: The human genome is littered with sequences left behind from long-ago viral infections but now scientists have found the code is still active Now researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have found that genetic material from a retrovirus called HERV-H is not only active, but is crucial in allowing a fertilised […]
Dark proteome “unlike any known structure”
| November 21, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, News |
From ScienceDaily: Scientists have long speculated about the nature of the dark proteome, the area of proteins that are completely unknown, but a recent study by CSIRO has mapped the boundaries of these dark regions, bringing us one step closer to discovering the complete structure and function of all proteins. … As knowledge of three-dimensional […]
About 70% of our genes traced back to acorn worm?
| November 20, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, News |
A half billion years ago. This helps us understand why most of the information in a life form cannot be in its genes. From ScienceDaily: Scientists have analyzed the genomes of two acorn worm species and found that approximately two-thirds of human genes have counterparts in the ancestors of these marine animals. These ancient genes, […]
Fun!! DNA as source code
| November 19, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design, News |
From xkcd: Try out other “physicist-driven” cartoons here. Follow UD News at Twitter!
Complex grammar of the genome’s language
| November 18, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design, language, News |
From ScienceDaily: A new study from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet shows that the ‘grammar’ of the human genetic code is more complex than that of even the most intricately constructed spoken languages in the world. The findings, published in the journal Nature, explain why the human genome is so difficult to decipher — and contribute to […]
The amazing design of the genome
| November 14, 2015 | Posted by News under Design inference, Genomics, News |
Discussed as a design but believed, by dogma, not to be a design. From the Atlantic: Genomes are so regularly represented as strings of letters-As, Gs, Cs, and Ts-that it’s easy to forget that they aren’t just abstract collections of data. They exist in three dimensions. They are made of molecules. They are physical objects […]
Nuclear Membrane Not Just a Bubble
| October 29, 2015 | Posted by PaV under Cell biology, Genomics |
Phys.Org has a new summary about a new finding regarding heterochromatin repair in the nucleus which involves the nuclear membrane. In their discussion, they make some interesting points: Previously, the nuclear membrane was thought to be mostly just a protective bubble around the nuclear material, with pores acting as channels to transport molecules in and […]
From bellow to moo is now testable?
| October 28, 2015 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics, News |
From ScienceDaily: Ancient wild ox genome reveals complex cow ancestry The ancestry of domesticated cattle proves more complex than previously thought, reports a paper published in the open access journal Genome Biology. … The team of researchers discovered clear evidence of breeding between wild British aurochs and early domesticated cattle. David MacHugh, senior author on […]
Beware contaminated research genomes
| October 15, 2015 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design, News |
While shopping at the gene counter, we learned from The Scientist : Published genomes are chock-full of contamination. But as awareness of the problem grows, so do methods to help combat it. When Supratim Mukherjee noticed the same bacteriophage sequence popping up again and again in hundreds of microbial genomes from a database he was […]
Eric H. Davidson (1937–2015), and the function of “junk DNA”
| October 13, 2015 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Genomics, Intelligent Design, News |
From obit: Inherent in the idea of gene regulatory networks was the concept that genome sequences that provided information about how genes should be expressed would be as important as the genome sequences that coded for the proteins themselves. Although non-protein-coding DNA was long considered to be “junk,” Davidson recognized that the key regulatory code […]
