Evolution

In 1988, Günter Wächtershäuser published a remarkable idea that excited tremendous interest, even being featured in a Scientific American article. It ran counter to prevailing ideas about the origin of life, and suggested new experimental approaches involving mineral interfaces. Wächtershäuser is a patent lawyer in Munich, Germany who enjoys fabricating intricate and novel approaches to the origin of life, then challenging others to test them. He is greatly influenced by the philosopher Karl Popper, who made the point that explanations are useless unless they are falsifiable. In other words,…

Is there an advantage to being short? I think so, but I'm biased, being what the French call quite "petite." Good things come in small packages, I say. But now at least one person with a presumably solid foundation in science backs me up. So when I hear yet another short joke (and I think I've heard 'em all), I can smile smugly to myself and know that all you leviathan, Brobdingnagian skyscrapers over 5' (or for the non-abnormal-American-measurementally inclined, 1.5 m) are actually at a disadvantage. Later In LifeDavid Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor, director of…

In the previous post we introduced the idea that indifference was the primary action at work at the biochemical and cellular levels. At this level, it would be hard to express any survival strategy beyond probabilistic, since reproduction is asexual with those cells that have the proper attributes, being able to dominate an environment in a short period of time. Similarly, it is also an environment that is subject to genetic “plagiarism” whereby novel combinations or sources of genetic information may be acquired directly through mechanisms like conjugation. The process of conjugation…

It's always best not to go overboard but the discovery of Darwinius masillae is pretty darn exciting, because it represents the most complete fossil primate ever found;  the skeleton, soft body outline and even the stomach contents.   It is phylogenetically terrific. Or not.  In any new claim like this, there will be doubts. The discovery was made at Grube Messel, near Darmstadt, Germany, where primates are rare and only fragmentary specimens had been located before.    Because it was collected privately and sold in two parts, it is only now that its significance is…

It appears that there is still a bit of a controversy and disconnect between the ideas in evolution relating to selfishness, cooperation, and altruism. In this series of articles, it is my intent to explore each of these ideas and demonstrate how they may arise and the role they play in improving the evolutionary lot of various species. Interestingly enough, all these terms are only meaningful within the context of cooperation, since a selfish individual is one that acts against the cooperative group and an altruistic individual is one that willingly acts for the cooperative group (…

Researchers comparing the fetal development of owl monkey eyes with those of the capuchin monkey have found that only a minor difference in the timing of cell proliferation can explain the multiple anatomical differences in the two kinds of eyes.  The findings help scientists understand how a structure as complex as the eye could change gradually through evolution, yet remain functional. The findings also offer a lesson in how seemingly simple genetic changes in the brain and nervous system could produce the multiple evolutionary changes seen in more advanced brains, without compromising…

David Sloan Wilson is doing a great job in his blog at The Huffington Post, exposing the contradictions that lie at the heart of selfish gene theory. He’s run a series of articles under the umbrella title of Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection, singling out Richard Dawkins as a target for some pretty heavy broadsides. Like this; “Richard has become unaccountable, in part by becoming a public icon. That disqualifies him as a spokesperson for science.” And this; “when it comes to semantic confusion, you can't beat selfish gene theory.” It just makes me feel warm and tingly all over.…

    Last week I described how John Oro discovered that five hydrogen cyanide molecules (HCN) could react to produce adenine (H5C5N5) one of the primary components of nucleic acids.  Oro was born in 1923 in a small village in the Catalonia region of Spain, where he grew up. He did the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in Barcelona, then moved to Texas and completed his PhD degree at Baylor College of Medicine about the time that I was graduating from high school. In 1961, John caught everyone’s attention when he published a paper suggesting that comets…

Richard Lewontin has a piece well worth reading in the New York Review of Books: There are, however, occasions on which there are orgies of idolatrous celebrations of the lives of famous men, when the Suetonian ideal of history as biography overwhelms us. For Darwinians, 2009 is such a year. He wanders around a bit, looking at the history of evolutionary ideas and why 19th century industrial capitalism might have contributed to the Origin success as a runaway best-seller. Lewontin makes a point (about Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True) that's been made before, but that's well worth…

The journal Evolution: Education and Outreach has a great piece on the evolution of whales, complete with pictures. As the piece says, "cetacean origin is one of the best known examples of macroevolution documented in the fossil record." The authors, leading researchers in the field, lay out the details with pictures of fossils, whale embryos, and even a four-limbed dolphin. Evolution: Education and Outreach is aimed in part at K-12 teachers, so this piece is not too technical. You're not going to find a better short intro to whale evolution. Fig, 27, "From Land to Water: the Origin of…