How Many Brains Do We Have?
New study of neuronal diversification reveals the complexity of the gut's brain
New study of neuronal diversification reveals the complexity of the gut's brain
Species may undergo minor adaptation through Darwinian processes, but this comes at the cost of genetic deterioration.
Pseudogenes are important in gene regulation and other activities.
Changing a DNA sequence can affect a protein even if it does not change the amino acid sequence.
Claims of dinosaur DNA stir controversy
Chromosomes regulate their own structure through their sequences of non-protein-coding DNA.
Cichlid fish in Nicaraguan lakes show evidence of rapid change.
An average of 70 mutations occur in each person.
Fossils are remains or other evidence of organisms that lived in the past and are preserved in the rocks. How did they form and what can we learn from them?
The specific genes have been identified that cause a lizard to match the black rocks it lives on.
Humans have unique “developmental control genes” that distinguish them from chimpanzees and other animals
Is the genetic basis of loss of flight due to mutations in protein-coding genes or in regulatory genes?
Comparison of genomes of jellyfish and sea anemones highlights the importance of orphan genes in taxonomically close organisms.
The study of fossils and the associated rocks in which they are preserved gives us information about ancient conditions in which organisms lived, called paleoenvironments, and the pathways leading to their fossilization.
Confirmation that fathers may sometimes pass mitochondrial DNA to their children violates the assumptions used to calculate the age of the most recent female common ancestor of all living humans. Published in Origins v. 21, n. 2.
In recent decades, epigenetics has been shown to be a promising field of research, since it describes changes in inheritance patterns that do not involve DNA modifications and are related to interactions between the organism and the environment. Epigenetic marks are chemical changes that occur in chromosomes and result in the silencing or activation of specific genes in different tissues. It has been…
A fossil bird recovered from Cretaceous lake deposits in China shows preservation of some soft tissues, including a pair of lungs that appear to have functioned in a way similar to those of living birds.
The Yellowstone "fossil forest" has many layers of volcanic ash. Trace element analysis of these layers reveals they derive from about four volcanic sources, and the layers from different sources are interlaced, implying contemporaneous eruptions of the different sources. Published in Origins n. 65.
During one of my frequent visits to the office of my high school headmaster, his individual tutelage yielded a life lesson that I’ve never forgotten. His exact words were, “You think you’re right!” Of course I thought I was right, wouldn’t anyone who thought they were wrong change their mind and then immediately think they are right? Now that I’m an adult biologist, I still think that I’m right. Inevitably…
Because the creation of God bears undeniable evidence of its Author, there are things in nature that may reflect – even though in a very pale way – some of the characteristics of the nature of God. What follows are two analogies from physics that can serve as illustrations for aspects of the Divinity.