evolgen
Posts by this author
I'm looking for a good recent review of DNA double-strand break repair. The review should focus on more than just humans and mammals, but it shouldn't be on just yeast either. Ideally, it would show schematics of different ways to repair and resolve double-strand (and, possibly, single-strand)…
Dr. Rob weighs in on the lack of a relationship between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphism and population size. To recap: DNA polymorphism should predict population size -- larger populations will have more polymorphism than small populations. Additionally, comparing different measures of…
The University of Oregon football team continues to impress cause distress with the ugliest uniforms in college sports. Whatever the disease that causes such disgusting public displays of bad taste, it appears to be infectious. The University of California football team has contracted said disease…
People like dogs. They're man's best friend, after all. There are tons of different breeds, many of which could be classified as unique species if we didn't know better. Our interest in dogs has led to lots of studies into dog breeding, figuring out which genes gave rise to the different…
Any department at a university will have tons of bureaucratic procedures one must complete in order to do anything from hang a message board in the hallway to purchase an expensive piece of equipment. My department is no different, although the bureaucracy is tolerable. That doesn't mean there aren…
Nick Wade thinks there's a race to decode genomes. CNN thinks there's a race to map the human genome:
$10 million prize for mapping human genomes
Sturtevant mapped genomes. The contest is to sequence and assemble a genome. Well, that's what we think the contest is. And it's pretty unclear how they…
Nicholas Wade is up to his old antics, blabbering about a contest to award $10 million to the first person to decode 100 genomes in 10 days. Only he means 'sequencing' rather than 'decoding'. But he still thinks they're synonyms:
"The announcement of the prize brought together two former rivals,…
I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: humans are apes; apes, old world monkeys, and new world monkey are primates; and humans are primates. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
So you can guess how I reacted when I saw this advertisement as I was perusing the latest issue of Nature.…
Thomas Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his many public defenses of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Richard Dawkins has been labeled "Darwin's Rottweiler", drawing a parallel between Dawkins's current role as a popularizer of science (and defender of reason) and Huxley'…
Via Yann Klimentidis come this paper comparing patterns of polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosomes from Native American populations. The premise is that mtDNA reveals the maternal demographic history (because mitochondria are only passed from mother to child) of a population and…
There is a general disconnect between the people I know from blogging and the people I know in real life. I've only met a couple of my fellow SciBlings (ScienceBlogs siblings): John Lynch, Mad Mike, and Carl. I have only once had a real world friend or colleague overtly mention to me in real life…
The sixty-third edition of Tangled Bank has been posted by the Indian Cowboy. Go read yourself some science.
If it weren't for coffee, much of the research that gets done today wouldn't get done. Or so I am led to believe based on the reverence people seem to have for the sacred bean. Frankly, I'd trade a cup of coffee for a good night's sleep. Hell, I'd trade a cup of coffee for pretty much anything.…
Ever wanted a tattoo of your favorite invertebrate? I hear they're inking insects, molluscs, cnidarians, and all kinds of other spineless critters in Monterey. To get your tat, visit the newest edition of Circus of the Spineless at Deep-Sea News.
As if we didn't have enough "-omes" in biology, I have come across yet another one: the methylome. It's beginning to sound like a Hindu temple up in here. My fascination with the -ome is well documented. I was made aware of the newest -ome in my collection by this preview of this article in Cell.…
I'm so vain I think I every single song is about me.
Dave wants us to "make a music mix that is a reflection of your informative years." I have no idea what he means by informative years, so I'm going to give you a list of a dozen or so songs (Dave's suggested amount) that I like, each by a…
I saw him again at the supermarket today. This is the second time I've seen him at the supermarket -- and third time overall. But this is the first time I was stealth, without any identification of my alma mater.
In case you're late to the game, this guy is an emeritus professor at my current…
Five nurses and one doctor have been imprisoned in a Libyan jail since 1999, accused of infecting more than 400 children with HIV. They were condemned to death in 2004, but the verdict was overturned. Their retrial is due to wrap up very soon, and they await their new sentencing. The problem: the…
The Scientist (we're not sure which one) reviews the palm tree sympatric speciation paper from February (doi here). Here's what Jerry Coyne has to say:
"Both these cases are most parsimoniously interpreted as sympatric speciation," said Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago. Still, he questioned…
My previous claims of geekiness were in jest. And if that wasn't clear to you, do you understand anything? Anyway, I defined nerds as book smart, dweebs as socially awkward, and dorks as nerdy dweebs (or dweeby nerds). Geeks to me are sideshow acts (freaks) that bite the heads off of live chickens…
We've been working our way across through the tree of life in the past few editions of Phylogeny Friday. Last week we took a look at the evolutionary relationships of the animals, and we realized that many of the branching orders are extremely difficult to resolve. Today we're going to zoom in on…
Alex has been pondering the nature of non-protein-coding RNAs. So have the boys at Gene Expression (how appropriate). Coffee Mug and JP have pointed out that a large portion of the human genome is transcribed, and much of it has an unknown function. Now JP describes a paper that takes an…
Tara has been given the task of pointing out some of the flaws in Chapter 7 of Jonathan Wells's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. From what I can gather, this is the chapter in which Wells claims that biology does not need evolution because evolution has no…
If you enjoyed my post on the evolution of sex chromosomes in tetrapods, you should check out Darwin Central for even more. It starts with the story of the vole, and goes into how mammalian sex chromosomes have evolved and what we can expect in the future.
Over a year and half ago (~1 eon in internet time) I wrote this blog entry in which I turned around the title of Dobzhansky's famous essay "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". I didn't think I was being all that clever when I came up with the following:
NOTHING IN…
I'm slowly working my way1 through my complementary copy of What We Believe but Cannot Prove. I'm almost done -- at page 214 out of 252 -- and I can say that it is very diverse. The essays range from very thoughtful and interesting to way too specific to a particular discipline . . . to off the…
So I'm back doing lab work again. That means I'm stumbling across weird stuff that Dylan might get a kick out of. Before I could start isolating any DNA, I had to make sure all my reagents and buffer solutions were ready to go. I was digging through our chemicals cabinet when I found this buffer:…
Scientific American has an online review of four books: God's Universe by Owen Gingerich, The Language of God by Francis Collins, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan. Here's a choice quote:
"In my view," [evolgen's least favorite NIH…
Adam Eyre-Walker has published a review of adaptive evolution in a few well studied systems: Drosophila, humans, viruses, Arabidopsis, etc. These organisms have been the subject of many studies that used DNA polymorphism, DNA divergence, or a combination of the two to detect natural selection in…
After spending the last couple of years in front of a computer or in the fly room, I finally returned to the wet lab last week. The occasion: DNA isolation. Now, this isn't any ole' DNA isolation protocol. That would be too easy. Instead, I need some high molecular weight DNA, which means it takes…