Evolution

On Easter Sunday, April 15th in 1990, I was visiting a church near my home in Penn Hills, PA.  A lady in Sunday School asked the pastor “How can I teach my teen-aged children about Adam&Eve in the Garden of Eden when they are being taught evolution in school?”.  All the pastor would say is “just believe the Bible”.  I considered that a copout, and realized that theologians had no clue on how to explain Genesis.  So I decided that I’d resolve the so called creation/evolution controversy.  I didn’t care if I proved the Bible to be wrong, or science to be wrong.…

The change in genetic material of a population of organisms and its accumulation over generations leads to adaptive evolution of an organism and origin of new species. The genetic pool of a sexually reproducing organism varies between individuals of even same species. The forces of natural selection favor the variations which provide adaptive fitness whereas selection occurs against unfavorable variations. Hence, over generations the favorable traits are increasingly accumulated leading to  increased adaptation of an organism to its surroundings. Hence, in addition to ensuring survival,…

Nearly all life forms rely on the same genetic code to specify the amino acid composition of proteins, but just how individual amino acids were assigned to specific three-letter combinations or codons during the evolution of the genetic code is still subject to speculation. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say that after only two waves of "matching" and some last minute fiddling, all 20 commonly used amino acids were firmly linked with their respective codons, setting the stage for the emergence of proteins with unique, defined sequences and properties. Their findings…

Researchers writing in Science have discovered a remarkable amount of plasticity in how transcription factors, the proteins that bind to DNA to control the activation of genes, maintained their function over 300 million years of evolution. They say that sequence conservation is not the whole story when it comes to maintaining tissue-specific gene regulation. Scientists believe that transcription factors recognize the genes that they regulate by binding to short, sequence-specific lengths of DNA upstream or downstream of their target genes. It was widely assumed that, like the sequences of…

A new study by scientists at the University of Michigan and Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes suggests that the evolution of morphology and physiology are controlled by different genetic mechanisms. The finding that form and function are shaped by different evolutionary genetic processes can not only aid in future evolutionary studies, but can also be helpful in the study of human disease, the study's authors say. The research appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the study, the team of evolutionary biologists used a database of knockout mice…

The botanical garden of Justus Liebig Universitat where I visited with my daughter when she was less than two years old in 1976 for the first time has attracted me again and again. Some of the widest collections of plants are there Now coming back to plants here besides female Cycas plant it also has a male Cycas plant in the same enclosure at the Botanical garden. Just like separate schools for boys and girls in good olden days the nature also kept male and female plants at a distance until now . Poor plants without flowers bearing seeds on leaves became extinct long ago hence nature…

During course of evolution (  if you believe in theory of evolution ) cycads were once called as living fossil . Most of the plants of this group became extinct and fossil. However when Cycas was discovered from China where it is found on places of worship as in Japan also, it was named a living fossil. The plant belong to group Gymnosperms or  naked seeded plants. The seeds are not enclosed inside the ovary and are borne on tips of highly reduced leaves known as megasporophylls on the female plants . The sexes are separate. Male cones and female megasporophylls are borne on…

The authors of a new paper in Current Biology say they have found the first concrete evidence that shows how gene duplications can lead to functional diversity in organisms. In the study, researchers examined how duplications of a gene called FLOWERING LOCUS T, or FT, could have evolved and interacted to prolong a sunflower's time to grow. A longer flower growth period means a bigger flower -- presumably an attribute of great value to the plant's first breeders. Biologists have long thought the accidental duplication of genetic material provides important fodder for evolution. Less risky…

Leaving aside those who dont believe in any religion most of the Global population is aligned to 4 or 5 religions mainly based on continents or group of coutries or pursue some kind of mythology or dictats. What makes a man to be fanatic ? My question is why does a man needs to be attached to a religion ? A new cult started by individuals in India in different names of baba , or swami, or some mata, or bhakti cult , or persons like guru have vast followings. Why does a man go out to look for solace in religion or guru or yoga or religious places of worship ? What is the psychological reason…

Researchers from Uppsala and Stockholm Universities say that the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the southern coast of Scandinavia 4,000 years ago were lactose intolerant. The conclusion suggests that today's Scandinavians are not descended from the Stone Age people in question but from a group that arrived later. Results of the research have been published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. "This group of hunter-gatherers differed significantly from modern Swedes in terms of the DNA sequence that we generally associate with a capacity to digest lactose into adulthood," says Anna…