linkedin post 2016-11-14 06:42:19

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"DNA IS NOT A BLUEPRINT for an organism: no information is actively processed by DNA alone. Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2016-11-13 06:50:01

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SO ENDS this section on the structural evolution of the human foot. The smell of the catacombs of the great Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road in London pervades this work. Anatomists scrutinizing old and obscure samples in basements. True beautiful Victorian scholarship brought (somewhat) to the modern era. Bolt-on evolution is alive and well in the toolbox of Rube Goldberg. https://lnkd.in/eFVn57d View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2016-11-13 06:45:10

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VARIED VESTIGIAL MYSCLE. "The plantaris muscle and tendon may be regarded as the vestigial remains of a primitive flexor muscle of the toes, which, originally continuous with the plantar aponeurosis, later was rendered discontinuous through intermediate attachment to the calcaneum. The plantaris muscle and its tendon are subject to considerable variation in both the points of origin and of insertion. In an examination of 150 lower extremities, the authors have encountered four types of insertion of the tendon." https://lnkd.in/ehfEQ7g View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2016-11-13 06:40:37

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VESTIGIAL STRUCTURES OF THE FOOT. "In numerous mammalian taxa one or more toes have become vestigial. In numerous others, one or more toes are lost and the associated metatarsals are reduced to a vestigial state. Locomotor changes may have provided the selective pressure that drove the evolution of vestigiality in many mammalian skeletal structures." https://lnkd.in/eMd4h72 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2016-11-13 06:37:14

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CRITERIA. "The first criterion for vestigiality is that in comparison to its state in the sister groups the structure exhibits extreme reduction. The second criterion is that the structure has lost the specialized morphology that it exhibits in the sister groups. The third criterion is that the structure has lost a salient ancestral function." https://lnkd.in/eMd4h72 View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2016-11-15 05:06:49

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PROBLEM SOLVED. "A widely accepted resolution to the seemingly inextricable duality of genotype–phenotype is that the modern ‘DNA–protein’ world evolved from simpler precursor system involving only one major molecular species that played both the role of information carrier and of enzymatic catalyst. In modern organisms, RNA is a biochemical mediator, enabling the translation of DNA to protein." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2016-11-13 06:27:29

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TWO HISTORIES. "Life is a dynamic process, and organismal structures disclose the history of the two principal levels of biological change: evolutionary and developmental. Vestiges (from the Latin vestigium, for footprint) reveal traces of prior states. Like actual footprints, vestiges offer glimpses of what was once there but is no longer present. In biological terms, they reveal former evolutionary and developmental conditions, and in this way they offer valuable keys to unlock the past." http://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn
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