In a protein coding sequence of DNA, three subsequent nucleotides form codons (see figure 1), which, in turn, form amino acids that will eventually give rise to a protein. Some of these codons,…

New research that includes representatives of 99% of mammalian families, has provided a ‘big picture’ for mammalian phylogeny. By assembling a large and robust DNA matrix, based on sequences of many…

A hot new study in Nature has rearranged the molluscan family tree--with some surprising results! No one can deny that cephalopods (squids, octos, and cuttles) are the brains of the family, with…

The past months there's been some talk about modern humans interbreeding with Neaderthals (see, for example, this post). Today, I came across a nice video that succinctly summarizes the main findings…

Tuesday evening, Facebook made major changes to its news feed and today the Internet is a hornet’s nest of complaints, protests, and threats. There is a new round of “quit Facebook” memes, and a…

We've often defended Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.  Publishing 50 years before Darwin, he can be forgiven for not having 'the greatest idea anyone ever had' and in the last few years,  geneticists…

In her 1979 article Gene-Juggling, Mary Midgley criticises Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene with the words: 'Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants…

What is life? As tough questions come, this is a good one. It seems simple at first, but even after great advances in biology and a sizeable increase in understanding how life works, there appears to…

Sex determination is obviously an important developmental event with great ecological and evolutionary consequences. A large variety of sex determination mechanisms exists, and the evolution of many…

The female orgasm has been a topic of debate among evolutionary biologists (and among many other people as well, of course). Is it adaptive, or a by-product of the male orgasm? Does it suck sperm…