biology
evolgen | May 31, 2006...or how a learned to stop worrying and love evo-devo.
As my mind gets a chance to process some of the stuff I heard and talked about at the meeting I just returned from, I'll post some thoughts that will help me organize my ideas (hopefully better organized than that last sentence). This is the first (of perhaps few, perhaps many) of those (possibly incoherent) ramblings -- interrupted by as few paranthetical remarks as possible.
In this post, I'll try to tie together:
A talk by Sean Carrol on the evolution of wing pigmentation.
A talk by Peter Andolfatto on the evolution of Drosophila non-…
razib | May 9, 2006A friend of mine, a biology graduate student, emailed me the following:
i did recently get in an argument with a fellow student (and friend) because he said he thought he was verging on being a militant agnostic eugenicist, but i said being a militant agnostic was idiotic because agnostics are just pussies. That got a big response from a few people around me.
I laughed for a while at that. Sometimes I feel decisively ambivalent.
Postscript: Just a note to those who find the use of the term "pussies" offensive and sexist, my correspondent is female. And one bad-ass-bitch at that.
evolgen | May 8, 2006So we're fusing two crappy mid-90s movies here -- Bio-Dome and Hot Shots! Part Deux -- but bear with me, this has nothing to do with the cinema. Inspired by Chad's attempt to come up with a Mount Rushmore for all of science, I decided to narrow the scope and create a Mount Biodome (limited to the life sciences). My three suggestions for sure locks were Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan. Darwin and Mendel will make everyone's list, but my nomination of Morgan did not go over so well (as I suspected). Some more nominations can be found below the fold...
If we ignore…
evolgen | May 4, 2006
Chad and I both listen to ESPN's Mike and Mike in the mornings. The last couple of days they've been trying to figure out what four athletes belong on the Mount Rushmore of sports (they settled on Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky). While I was sitting around wondering if they would even mention Pele, Chad thought it would be cool to come up with a Mount Rushmore of Science. I'm not going to tackle such a broad topic. Instead, I ask who belongs on a Mount Rushmore of Biology, which I'd like to call Mount Biodome. My suggestions are below the fold -- and, no,…
jlynch | May 3, 2006
This little beauty is Vespa mandarinia, up to two inches long with a three inch wingspan, and a quarter inch stinger. The latter injects venom so strong that it can dissolve human tissue, but they normally feed on honeybees; "Just one of these hornets can kill 40 European honeybees a minute; a handful of the creatures can slaughter 30,000 European honeybees within hours, leaving a trail of severed insect heads and limbs." More here and here. There's another pic below the fold.
(Hat tip to Ocellated)
jlynch | April 26, 2006Since GrrlScientist raised the stake by giving a poem by the zoologist Arthur O'Shaughnessy, here's one by marine biologist Walter Garstang (1868-1949) called "Ballad of the Veliger or how the Gastropod got its Twist" from 1928.
The Veliger's a lively tar, the liveliest afloat,
A whirling wheel on either side propels his little boat;
But when the danger signal warns his bustling submarine,
He stops the engine, shuts the port, and drops below unseen.
He's witnessed several changes in pelagic motor-craft;
The first he sailed was just a tub, with a tiny cabin aft.
An Archi-mollusk fashioned it…
evolgen | April 25, 2006Bora has been pushing the idea of publishing original research (hypotheses, data, etc) on science blogs. This post is part of a series exploring the evolution of a duplicated gene in the genus Drosophila. Links to the previous posts can be found below. Part 2 of this series (The Backstory) can be found after the jump.
Previous entries:
Part 1 - Introduction
The Backstory
The enzyme fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase (hereafter referred to as aldolase) is responsible for splitting fructose-1,6-bisphosphate into glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate and dihydroxyacetone-phosphate during glycolysis.…
jlynch | April 23, 2006From the Associated Press:
Scientists have discovered a mutant gene that triggers the body to form a second, renegade skeleton, solving the mystery of a rare disease called FOP that imprisons children in bone for life.
The finding, reported Sunday, may one day lead to development of a drug, not only to treat the rare bone disorder, but more common bone buildup related to head and spine trauma, and even sports injuries, the researchers said.
"We've reached the summit," said Dr. Frederick Kaplan, an orthopedist whose team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine pinpointed the cause…
evolgen | April 23, 2006Otherwise known as a choloroplast:
The Chloroplast You scored 46 Industriousness, 54 Centrality, and 23 Causticity!
You're the Chloroplast!
Most of the Earth's energy comes from the chloroplast's ability to capture the energy of the sun and fix cabon dioxide for conversion to starch. Like the mitochondria, they have their own DNA and live somewhat independantly from the rest of the cell.
In terms of real life, you have it all! You're the person everyone wants or wants to be. Just watch out for being overconfident, as you may end up alone.
My test tracked 3 variables How you compared…
evolgen | April 13, 2006I tend to blog in spurts. When I have nothing interesting to say (or lack the motivation to put together one of the 'BIG POSTS' I have waiting in the queue) I don't try to fill my blog with, well, filler posts. That's just the way I am. Inspiration tends to come in one big surge, at which point I'll write a bunch of entries in a matter of days. That's why this blog has laid dormant for nearly a week while the rest of the ScienceBlogs army trudges onward.
Despite what I said above, I felt a bit of an obligation to post something, regardless of how filler-esque it seems. So, I give you a…
lee billings | April 10, 2006Gather 'round, dear readers, and let me regale you with the sad saga of the late, great Linus Pauling.
On second thought, calling it "sad" might be a bit excessive. Pauling was the only person to win two individual Nobels, after all (one for chemistry, one for peace). His great achievements are too numerous to fully list here; suffice to say he was a pioneer in molecular biology, genetics, immunology, the nature of chemical bonds and scientific activism. But by his death in 1994, many in the scientific community regarded him as an embarrassment, an out-of-touch quack at best and a dishonest…
razib | April 6, 2006On my other weblog someone is asking about genetics & evolution texts. Specifically they were wondering about the order in which to read Principles of Population Genetics, Evolutionary Genetics and Quantitative Genetics. That was actually the order I suggested, the first book is more basic and broader, while the two latter texts are more specific. In fact the last book is to some extent an elaboration of just one chapter in Principles of Population Genetics. Additionally, I recommended Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics if you want to take the "next step" in specialization (the…
evolgen | March 30, 2006
The Coalition Against Biopiracy has announced their winners for the 2006 Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy, and they're a hoot. We already knew that Darwin was a pirate, but now we learn that so are Craig Venter and Google. What are their crimes? Venter is accused of being the "Greediest Biopirate", and Google is accused of being the "Biggest Threat to Genetic Privacy". I have some more details on these charges below the fold, in addition to showing why the Coalition Against Biopiracy needs to walk the plank.
Venter is accused of:
"undertaking, with flagrant disregard for national…
razib | March 29, 2006I have a maxim, "beware of British newspapers." I guess I should add the BBC to that list after reading this slapdash piece, Obese men 'have lower IQs'. Speaking as a normal weight individual with a BMI of 22.8 I don't have a personal axe to grind, but this study screams correlation does not equal causation.
The Boston study found that men with a BMI of 30 or more scored on average 23% lower marks in tests of mental acuity.
The authors make some noise about blood circulation, and I'm sure you can posit thousands of halfway plausible causative components, but perhaps fat dudes are just…
evolgen | March 23, 2006Alex Palazzo managed to piss off some people with his taxonomy of biomedical disciplines. We have also learned that there are different types of physics geeks and anthropologists. (By the way, don't ever call me a geek; geeks bite the heads off of chickens. I'm a nerd.) I previously attempted to classify evolutionary biologists and named them after the important names in their particular field. It was actually a satire of the creationist ploy to call people Darwinists, so laugh. Now I'm going to further divide up the evolutionary geneticists (already a sub-set of biologists) into a bunch…
evolgen | March 23, 2006The term "Junk DNA" is bullshit. There, I said it. The moment I hear someone utter that phrase, I immediately lose respect for him or her. No one whose opinion is worth anything will refer to non-coding DNA as junk. That's why this article bothers me. The title, "Junk DNA may not be so junky after all" has nothing to do with the content of the article. The research being described is not about showing that non-coding DNA has a function. The function has already been determined. The researchers have used zebrafish to identify enhancers for human genes. The subtitle to the article (…
jlynch | March 20, 2006 Researchers have found evidence for referential gestures in wild chimps. Humans commonly use referential gestures that direct the attention of recipients to particular aspects of the environment. Because the recipient of a referential gesture must infer the signaler's meaning, the use of these gestures has been linked with cognitive capacities such as the ability to recognize another individual's mental state.
As the press release states:
The gesture studied by the researchers--a "directed scratch"--involved one chimpanzee making a relatively loud and exaggerated scratching movement on a…
razib | March 17, 2006I wonder, do readers know much about "Post Modern" biology? Radio Open Source contacted me about this topic...the thing is that I don't usually pay much attention to the "overthrow" of the "orthodox" doctrine because I don't think these "doctrines" are really adhered to in the same way that Marxism or Christianity are. Science is about change, falsification is a feature and not a bug! Myself, contravention of standard orthodoxy is cool, that means the low hanging fruit might still be around. Epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity seem to be well acknowledged phenomena which might be…
evolgen | March 15, 2006Hey, Myers, two can play at this game. An article in the Journal of Molecular Evolution presents structural and sequence analysis of hemocyanin (an oxygen carrying protein) from the cephalopod, Nautilus pomilius (shown at the left). They also compared the sequence to another cephalopod, Octopus dofleini, and found that the two species diverged approximately 415 million years ago.
Bergmann, S, B Lieb, P Ruth, and J Markl. 2006. The Hemocyanin from a Living Fossil, the Cephalopod Nautilus pompilius: Protein Structure, Gene Organization, and Evolution. J Mol Evol 62: 362-374.
jlynch | March 11, 2006If the hairy lobster wasn't your style of thing, what about a meter long Giant freshwater crayfish (Astacopsis gouldi) from Tasmania?
Yeah, I know, it's not a lobster ... but they are related.
It's Saturday evening. I'm posting on parasitic fish and large crustacea. I need to get a life.
(source)