A new Rice University study's side-by-side comparison of 10 human genetic models to determine when 'mitochondrial Eve'(mtEve), the maternal ancestor of all living humans, lived uses a very different…

Nature has evolved all strategies to combat heat and drought. Plants which look like stones store carbondioxide during night time in their cell vacuole in the form of malate derived from dark form of…

The re-emergence of the citizen scientist began a major fast forward in 1999. Scientists at the University of California Berkeley launched a new project to virtually connect millions of…

One of the problems that gave rise to the gene-centric view is the prevalence of the notion that individuals tended to evolve for the "good of the species".  In essence the gene-centric view…

This story appeared on Science Daily, based on a press release from CNRS in France: Segmentation Is the Secret Behind the Extraordinary Diversification of Animals ScienceDaily (July 27, 2010) —…

The concept of "primitive" is one that is very often misunderstood. Properly defined, "primitive" means "more like a particular ancestor", refers only to individual characteristics (not whole species…

As I have explained in various blog posts and in this paper, it is a fallacy to assume that any one character found in a so-called "primitive" species alive today was also found in the ancestral…

For the past year, I have been working with several colleagues to completely redesign our first year biology program at the University of Guelph. One of the aspects of the new "Discovering…

Nobel laureate J. W. Szostak delivered an interesting lecture on his experiments relating to the origins of life. His research group has set itself the goal of just getting some kind of protocell…

Recently I had a chance to visit the grave of my departed Professor Dr Karl-Hermann Neumann with his son Mr Rolf Neumann in Giessen Germany. Professor Dr Neumann worked with Professor F. C. Steward…