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Moore’s Law, The Origin Of Life, And Dropping Turkeys Off A Building

I’ve already mentioned the nonsensical paper “published” in (surprise, surprise) arXiv in...

Genome Reduction In Bladderworts Vs. Leg Loss In Snakes

In one sense, I am happy that there is enough interest in the concept of “junk DNA” (and by...

Send This To Anyone Who Writes Or Reports On A Badaptationist Story

...

Another Just-So Story, This Time About Fists

“It is demonstrable,” said he, “that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as...

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T. Ryan GregoryRSS Feed of this column.

I am an evolutionary biologist specializing in genome size evolution at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Be sure to visit Evolver Zone

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I hate it when that happens.

I hate it when that happens.

Jun 20 2008 | comment(s)

I sometimes joke that you should never read your own papers once they are published, because you will undoubtedly find something you wish you had written differently. Case in point, a paper of ours that is soon to come out in which we said:

Learning Versus Evolution In Microbes.

Learning Versus Evolution In Microbes.

Jun 20 2008 | comment(s)

One of my pet peeves is the common description in the media of bacteria "learning" to "outsmart" antibiotics. As anyone with a basic comprehension of evolution knows, learning has nothing to do with it. Learning is what happens during the lifetime of an individual, and it occurs in direct response to some information that the individual encounters. When bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, it is not by learning. The individual bacteria do not sense the antibiotic and change to become resistant. Rather, individual bacteria in a population that happen to be resistant because of some genetic difference (or in whom a mutation conferring resistance arises by chance or through gene transfer from another population) will survive and reproduce more effectively than individuals lacking the genetic characteristic that confers resistance. Over many generations of this process, the gene providing resistance to the antibiotic will be found in the majority of bacteria -- not because it "spreads" and not because individual bacteria develop  resistance, but because the bacteria that are the most abundant in the population after many generations are obviously the descendants of the ancestors that left the most offspring, namely those who survived the antibiotics.

Scientists get pwned, conference ends in total carnage.

Scientists get pwned, conference ends in total carnage.

Jun 19 2008 | comment(s)

Video games and I get along well.  Always have.  When I was a kid, my father and I went regularly to the local arcade to play our favourites.  (Guess the decade: I usually played centipede and Tron).  I haven't owned a console system since the original Nintendo, but games have occupied a significant portion of my PC hard drive since high school.

 

Fishy phylogenetics figures found.

Fishy phylogenetics figures found.

Jun 19 2008 | comment(s)

Currently working on a paper about fishes, I came across some interesting figures. (Well, mildly interesting, as they are more of the same actually).

Acceptance of evolution in Canada.

Acceptance of evolution in Canada.

Jun 10 2008 | comment(s)

About a year ago an Angus Reid poll provided some information regarding the acceptance of evolution in Canada, which was taken by some as the basis for claiming that the level of acceptance of this unifying principle of biology is roughly the same in Canada as in the United States. Although the results of the AR poll were indeed rather disappointing, they did not indicate an equivalence of views between the two nations.

Here are two relevant press releases from Angus Reid:

U.S. Majority Picks Creationism over Evolution (April 25, 2006)

Genomics by Press Release in Science.

Genomics by Press Release in Science.

Jun 06 2008 | comment(s)

Jonathan Eisen, who blogs at The Tree of Life, has coined the phrase "Genomics by Press Release", and has even given out two ignominious awards for particularly egregious examples. The most recent was Genomics By Press Release Award #2: Leiden University and the First "Female" Genome. Lest anyone think that blogs are ineffective as a means of communication, consider the fact that Jonathan's post has been reported on in this week's issue of Science.