Genomics

There were no external injuries. The fossil — discovered in the region of Yakutia — has its skin, hair, hooves and tail preserved. Yakutia is also famous for having found woolly mammoth fossils in the permafrost. Scientists from Russia’s Northeast Federal University, who presented the discovery Thursday, said the foal is estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old. They believe it was about two months old when it died.[name], “Ancient horse found perfectly preserved in permafrost” at CBC News, via Associated Press From Phys.org: Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in the regional capital of Yakutsk, was surprised to see the perfect state of the find. He noted it’s the best-preserved ancient foal found to date. More. Soil Read More ›

With Philip Cunningham Philip Cunningham writes to say, “As the preceding e-mails strongly indicated, Biological Form simply is not reducible to Darwinian Mechanisms” Paper. See also: Do all genes affect every complex trait? Veronique Greenwood: The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way… and Other bad news from the genome for neo-Darwinism From Philip Cunningham: The paper makes the genotype-phenotype mapping problem that much worse for neo-Darwinists. Here are few notes to that throw a little light on how bad the problem is.

Philip Cunningham hat tipped us earlier on the article at Quartz that raised the possibility that all genes affect every complex trait. He also writes to say, “The paper makes the genotype-phenotype mapping problem that much worse for neo-Darwinists. Here are few notes to that throw a little light on how bad the problem is:” These news items from recent years give some sense of the issues, he says: The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology (Bard, 2011) Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this Read More ›

Michael Behe’s new book at Amazon: Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA that Challenges Evolution is due February 26, 2019. No cover image as yet. From HarperOne: The scientist who has been dubbed the “Father of Intelligent Design” and author of the groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box contends that recent scientific discoveries further disprove Darwinism and strengthen the case for an intelligent creator. In his controversial bestseller Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that science itself has proven that intelligent design is a better explanation for the origin of life. In Darwin Devolves, Behe advances his argument, presenting new research that offers a startling reconsideration of how Darwin’s mechanism works, weakening the theory’s validity Read More ›

Yesterday, PaV drew our attention to this story from Marlowe Hood at Phys.org: Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution Here’s another swatch from it, of interest: “another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between. “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.” The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.” More. If this replicates, it will do for textbook Darwinism what the Cambrian explosion did. Paper. See also: Startling Result–90% of Animals Less than 200 kya and Researchers: Cambrian explosion was not an explosion after all (It was just an intense Read More ›

From Laurel Hamers at ScienceNews: EmailPrintTwitterFacebookRedditGoogle+ Sluggish memories might be captured via RNA. The molecule, when taken from one sea slug and injected into another, appeared to transfer a rudimentary memory between the two, a new study suggests. Most neuroscientists believe long-term memories are stored by strengthening connections between nerve cells in the brain (SN: 2/3/18, p. 22). But these results, reported May 14 in eNeuro, buoy a competing argument: that some types of RNA molecules, and not linkages between nerve cells, are key to long-term memory storage. “It’s a very controversial idea,” admits study coauthor David Glanzman, a neuroscientist at UCLA. More. Yes. Here is where replication studies earn their keep. If such studies are allowed, that is. From Read More ›

From Douglas E. Soltis, Michael J. Moore, Emily B. Sessa, Stephen A. Smith, and Pamela S. Soltis, Using and navigating the plant tree of life, at Amerian Journal of Botany 7 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.1071 (open access) : The “tree of life” has become a metaphor for the interconnectivity and breadth of all life on Earth. It also has come to symbolize the broad investigation of biodiversity, including both the reconstruction of phylogeny and the numerous downstream analyses that are possible with a firm phylogenetic underpinning. … Accompanying these exciting advances are equally significant challenges that remain for the construction of a better and more complete picture of the evolution of plant lineages. In addition to the computational challenges of larger Read More ›

At Phys.Org there’s a press release that talks about how “information” can be “hidden” in plain text. They use some kind of ‘perturbation’ method, which, I suspect is linked to some kind of set of statistics. Here’s what they say: Computer scientists at Columbia Engineering have invented FontCode, a new way to embed hidden information in ordinary text by imperceptibly changing, or perturbing, the shapes of fonts in text. FontCode creates font perturbations, using them to encode a message that can later be decoded to recover the message. . . . “While there are obvious applications for espionage, we think FontCode has even more practical uses for companies wanting to prevent document tampering or protect copyrights, and for retailers and Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Modern humans co-existed and interbred not only with Neanderthals, but also with another species of archaic humans, the mysterious Denisovans. Research now describes how, while developing a new genome-analysis method for comparing whole genomes between modern human and Denisovan populations, researchers unexpectedly discovered two distinct episodes of Denisovan genetic intermixing, or admixing, between the two. This suggests a more diverse genetic history than previously thought between the Denisovans and modern humans. … What is known about Denisovan ancestry comes from a single set of archaic human fossils found in the Altai mountains in Siberia. That individual’s genome was published in 2010, and other researchers quickly identified segments of Denisovan ancestry in several modern-day populations, most significantly with individuals Read More ›

What? Someone noticed? From Manchester University: A comprehensive new study looking at variations in Ichthyosaurus, a common British Jurassic ichthyosaur (sea-going reptile) also known as ‘Sea Dragons’, has provided important information into recognizing new fossil species. Professor Judy Massare (SUNY College at Brockport, NY, USA) and Dean Lomax (The University of Manchester) have studied hundreds of specimens of Ichthyosaurus. After their latest research project the pair urge caution in naming new fossil species on the basis of just a few fragmentary or isolated remains. For their research Prof Massare and Lomax focused on one particular part of the Ichthyosaurus skeleton, the hindfin (or back paddle). The purpose was to evaluate the different forms among the six-known species of Ichthyosaurus. They Read More ›

They withered under study. There’s been a lively discussion between geneticists Dennis Venema and Richard Buggs and about whether the human race must have had more than one pair of ancestors (Venema yes, Buggs no). From Evolution News and Science Today: Earlier, we saw that evolutionary genomicist Richard Buggs has been engaged in a dialogue with Venema about the latter’s arguments against a short bottleneck of two individuals in human history. Buggs is skeptical that methods of measuring human genetic diversity cited by Venema can adequately test such an “Adam and Eve” hypothesis. Buggs’s initial email to Venema thus concluded, “I would encourage you to step back a bit from the strong claims you are making that a two person bottleneck Read More ›

From Guenther Witzany, Telos-Philosophische Praxis, Salzburg-Austria, Corrado Spadafora, CNR National Research Council of Italy, and Luis Villarreal, University of California here: Evolution – Genetic Novelty/Genomic Variations by RNA Networks and Viruses, 4 – 8 July 2018 Salzburg – Austria For more than half a century it has been accepted that new genetic information is mostly derived from random‚ error-based’ events. Now it is recognized that errors cannot explain genetic novelty and complexity. Empirical evidence establishes the crucial role of non-random genetic content editors such as viruses and RNA-networks to create genetic novelty, complex regulatory control, inheritance vectors, genetic identity, immunity, new sequence space, evolution of complex organisms and evolutionary transitions. Genetic identities of RNA stem loop groups (RNA-networks) such as e.g., group Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Dodder, a parasitic plant that causes major damage to crops in the US and worldwide every year, can silence the expression of genes in the host plants from which it obtains water and nutrients. This cross-species gene regulation, which includes genes that contribute to the host plant’s defense against parasites, has never before been seen from a parasitic plant. … “Dodder is an obligate parasite, meaning that it can’t live on its own,” said Michael J. Axtell, professor of biology at Penn State and an author of the paper. “Unlike most plants that get energy through photosynthesis, dodder siphons off water and nutrients from other plants by connecting itself to the host vascular system using structures called haustoria. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A million years ago, a species of tiny worms called Caenorhabditis briggsae evolved the ability to breed via selfing. As a result, most C. briggsae are hermaphrodites with both male and female sex organs. Haag’s group, which focuses on the evolution of sex, has long studied C. briggsae because of their unusual reproductive behavior. … To study how selfing shaped the evolution of C. briggsae, Erich Schwarz, an assistant research professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University and co-corresponding author of the study, sequenced the genome of Caenorhabditis nigoni, the closest relative of C. briggsae. C. nigoni always reproduce by mating with other individuals, or outcrossing. By comparing the genomes of the two species, the researchers Read More ›