For about a year now, from reading various news items on newly published science articles, I’ve begun to consider not DNA, but RNA, the real driver of life. I think that DNA’s essential role is that of information storage–a hard drive, while RNA is like the BIOS system–it tells the “system” what it should be Read More…
Genomics
Cells compared across species — expected to be similar — prove strikingly different
At SciTechDaily: “I was struck by how stark the differences are between them,” said Tarashansky, who was lead author of the paper and is a Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Fellow. “We thought that they should have similar cell types, but when we try analyzing them using standard techniques, the method doesn’t recognize them as being similar.”
Nature’s diversions: Creeping vole has weird sex chromosomes
We are told this “weirdest sex chromosome system known to science” happened in the past couple of million years but it is not clear why.
Weirder: Dinoflagellate genes all point the same way
So how did all this originate randomly, different from what all the other life forms do — and still work?
Dinoflagellate genome structure is unique
So, in other words, these plankton evolved (randomly, so we are told) a highly successful genome that’s entirely different from the type that most life forms have. Well, if you are skeptical of Darwinian claims that it all happened randomly but just once, how about (at least) twice? Increasingly, Darwinism – or whatever it is that they want to call that stuff nowadays – is for true believers.
Giraffe genome points to maybe four species but it is “not evolutionary”
If a big survey of the giraffe genome can’t tell us the answers to the most puzzling questions about one of the most remarkable animals, where should we look for answers next?
Dawkins’s thesis that the bacterial flagellum evolved from the injectisome is no longer tenable, prof says
Darwinism’s key strength is that it is much simpler and more straightforward than life forms are.
What? Some viruses use an “alternative” genetic alphabet?
This is a problem, all right. But really, why do these, or any life/quasi-life forms, have a “genetic alphabet” (an alphabet of life, not learning) at all if everything happened by natural selection acting on random mutation, as the textbooks claim? Let alone an alphabet of life they can just substitute some other letters for? Is there anyone out there who can do the math?
Project to map 70,000 vertebrate genomes already turning up more bad news for “junk DNA”
Also: “The work revealed that the last surviving kākāpō population, isolated on an island off New Zealand for the last 10,000 years, has somehow purged deleterious mutations, despite the species’ low genetic diversity.” Hmm.
Researchers search for the “last bacterial common ancestor” in a world of horizontal gene transfer
One senses that the reconstruction will be subject to considerable revision. It’s not entirely clear what “ancestry” means in a world of rampant horizontal gene transfer.
Archaea microbes have genes like flexible slinkies
They were only discovered in 1977 and they get more unusual all the time: Microbes called archaea package their genetic material into flexible shapes that flop open in unusual ways, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator Karolin Luger reports March 2, 2021, in the journal eLife. “Very much to our surprise, we found that these Read More…
Bones of contention: A new clue as to how dogs got to the Americas
U Buffalo: “Researchers analyzed the dog’s mitochondrial genome, and concluded that the animal belonged to a lineage of dogs whose evolutionary history diverged from that of Siberian dogs as early as 16,700 years ago.”
The human genome at 20. We have some answers but way more questions now.
At The Conversation on junk DNA: Bewilderingly, scientists found that the non-coding genome was actually responsible for the majority of information that impacted disease development in humans. Such findings have made it clear that the non-coding genome is actually far more important than previously thought.
Interesting new items from the Neanderthal genome
At Sapiens: Thanks to this work, we now know details about Neanderthals that the archaeological record alone could never have provided. For example, fragments of DNA from specimens found in Spain and Italy showed that at least some Neanderthals likely had pale skin and reddish hair—although, interestingly, the variations for this coloring are different from the variants found in modern humans. Apparently, redheads among Homo sapiens evolved separately…
3D chimp and human genomes differ significantly
Some of us remember when we were 99% chimpanzee… But that is so last decade … This type of finding makes more sense. If we were really 99% genetically similar to chimpanzees, the logical deduction is that the genome doesn’t tell us much about a life form. Would be nice if it did, right?