Category: Uncategorized

SO ENDS this first of two weekends on reductive evolution. This report suggests that reductive evolution is not only far from being rare, rather it is a common form of evolution, characterized by explosive bursts of genomic complexity followed by slow winnowing of the chaff. This it at odds with the popular view of evolution as an inexorable ascent to complex (human) perfection. The Copernican Revolution has been slow to take hold, it seems. View in LinkedIn

FLY IN THE OINTMENT. "Suffice it to note that the largest bacterial genomes encompass almost as many genes as some “obviously” complex animals, such as for example flies, and more than many fungi." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

CONFOUNDING PROBLEM. "Comparative genomics reinforced the complex relationships between the different levels of complexity in the most convincing manner by demonstrating the lack of a simple link between genomic and organismal complexities." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

BEYOND THE ONION. "Importantly, the comparison is not restricted to onions versus humans. It could as easily be between pufferfish and lungfish, which differ by ∼350-fold, or members of the genus Allium, which have more than a 4-fold range in genome size that is not the result of polyploidy." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

THE ONION QUESTION. "Why does an onion require five times more of it (the genome) than a human? " https://lnkd.in/eT5V5Xc View in LinkedIn

GNARNY KNOT. "In the past, death posed a conundrum for biologists: death as such did not seem to perform a function in life, yet death seemed a part of life, since only living things died. Indeed, death did not seem to be one of life’s qualities, even though, with few exceptions, it was the end of life." https://lnkd.in/d-cTw6G View in LinkedIn

ERROR RATES. "We have recently developed a novel method that allows us to estimate transcription error rates and the degree to which these vary among eukaryotic lineages. Remarkably, error rates at this level are typically >1000x those at the level of genome replication. The implication is that >1% of transcripts typically contain an erroneous base." http://www.bio.indiana.edu/faculty/directory/profile.php?person=milynch View in LinkedIn

DEATH'S PATH. "Death is not unchanging, but rather has evolved over time." https://lnkd.in/dp_3aQ5 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF DEATH. "The evolutionary origin of senescence remains a fundamental unsolved problem in biology." https://lnkd.in/dUX_Fna View in LinkedIn

NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF EXCEPTIONS. "Sizes of effects under our models have little impact, and sometimes no impact, on predicted hazard functions, but they have major impact on rates of turnover. For each allele, the reciprocal of the nonlinear age-specific force of natural selection indicates a typical clearance time." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn