Researchers: This union of two different genomes, called allopolyploidization, is very interesting in evolutionary terms, as it leads to the formation of new plant species and is widespread in many plant groups. Many important crops, such as bread and durum wheat, oats, cotton, canola, coffee, and tobacco have such combined genomes from at least two crossed species.
horizontal gene transfer
Could symbiosis with bacteria play a role in the widespread use of magnetic navigation in animals?
Evolution News and Science Today describes the idea as “little more than a hunch” but one worth pursuing. It involves endosymbiosis and horizontal gene transfer. Its a start towards a reasonable explanation and way better than classic Darwinism.
Rob Sheldon on those curious DNA circles in the human body and the death of Common Descent
This little toolkit looks designed for horizontal gene transport (HGT), but there wasn’t anything similar to it for eukaryotes. Then came this article. And apparently humans (a rather sophisticated eukaryote) have circular DNA as well, it just was overlooked for 30 years.
Watching microorganisms bend “the rules” of evolution
Researchers: “It was previously thought that the only genes that could spread through a population were those that caused a benefit ‘right now’ (in the environment that the population is experiencing at that point in time).” That’s Darwinism. And Darwinism is becoming comprehensively out of date.
(Reformed) New Scientist takes horizontal gene transfer seriously
At New Scientist: “‘Yeast and bacteria have fundamentally different ways of turning DNA into protein, and this seemed like a really, really strange phenomenon,’ he says.” They ain’t seen nothing yet. If you subtract the “random mutation” from “natural selection,” what’s left of Darwinism? By the time the Raging Woke hammer down Darwin’s statue, chances are the New Scientist crowd will have forgotten who the old Brit toff even was. Shrug.
Paper: Paradigm shift needed in understanding evolution of complex animals
Paper: “Horizontal gene transfer and mating between diverged lineages blur species boundaries and challenge the reconstruction of evolutionary histories of species and their genomes.”
A friend writes to ask, “If we don’t have common descent, and we don’t have natural selection, why do we still call it evolution?”
An example of interwoven protein code (HT, Wiki!)
Here, in human mitochondrial DNA — note the BLUE code start and the RED code stop; all HT to Wiki publishing against known ideological interest: Complex interwoven code is of course doubly functionally specific, so it is exponentially harder to account for, other than by exceedingly sophisticated and creative intelligently directed configuration. Indeed, when I Read More…
Algae routinely steal genes from bacteria
One wonders how much of their genome they steal from more closely related species (as opposed to schoolbook Darwinian evolution).
Billion-year-old algae (“leaves, … branches …”) raise some interesting questions
Like any real history, evolution is not driven by a single force or idea. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria obviates the quest for an “ancestor” seaweed. Maybe there isn’t one.
Question for readers: In a world where horizontal gene transfer is an important force, what becomes of Dawkins’s Selfish Gene?
The selfish gene is an entity driven by an unadmitted teleological force to replicate itself in offspring. But horizontal gene transfer—hardly taken seriously the day before yesterday—features genes that simply end up on a different string. Is a relentless force of selfishness driving them to do that? Or do they just drift and end up on that string?
Researchers: Horizontal gene transfer allowed plants to move to land
This explanation makes explicit that this is not Darwinian evolution. One writeup even alludes to the type of Darwinian tale that is being replaced.
Beetle evolution attributed in part to horizontal gene transfer (perhaps)
Hedging, yes, But there was a time we would have been told about Darwinism. Period.
Bacteria harpoon DNA from their environment, to fight antibiotics
Wait. What does this story remind us of? Oh yes, recently a writer at The Atlantic went so far as to express doubt about the claim of a Darwin-in-the-schools lobbyist that everyone needs to buy into their approach to evolution if we want to understand superbugs.
Horizontal gene transfer: Cholera bacterium steals 150 genes at once
Relevant in more ways than one. Remember that recent Atlantic article where the writer was grousing that her school didn’t teach “evolution” (Darwinism)? And a Darwin lobbyist told her that as a result we wouldn’t understand superbugs? Darwinism is probably in the way, actually.
Do genes that jump shake the tree of life?
Yes,but what hope is there that textbooks could start teaching reality when even the right to question the Darwinian [sheet] is still a big controversy in many places? Could science writers like Jabr and others agree that it is time to make textbooks about evolution sound like the reality and not like the 1925 Monkey Trial revisited?