Evolution

X Chromosome Gets Some Respect As An Evolutionary Tool

The Y chromosome is an established evolutionary tool and has been used in many evolutionary studies. While easy to use, it has limitations which prevent it from full utilization about the most evolutionary informative DNA segments in the Human genome. As p ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 16 2008 - 10:33am

Sexually Antagonistic Selection- A Darwinian Evolution Model For Homosexuality

Male homosexuality is difficult to explain under strictly Darwinian evolutionary models, because carriers of genes predisposing towards male homosexuality would be likely to reproduce less than average, suggesting that alleles influencing homosexuality sho ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 17 2008 - 9:35pm

40 Year-Old Theory Confirmed: Genes Quadrupled During Evolution But Most Were Lost

The newly sequenced genome of a dainty, quill-like sea creature called a lancelet provides the best evidence yet that vertebrates evolved over the past 550 million years through a four-fold duplication of the genes of more primitive ancestors. The late gen ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 18 2008 - 4:40pm

Scientists Fix Bugs In Our Understanding Of Evolution

In the current issue of Science, researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute [EMBL-EBI] uncover systematic errors in existing methods that compare genetic sequences of different species to learn about ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 19 2008 - 3:22pm

Natural Selection Before Darwin

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) opened his first notebook about "the species question" in 1837, not long after his return from the voyage of the Beagle.  By 1838, he had developed the basic outline of his theory of natural selection to explain the ev ...

Article - T. Ryan Gregory - Jul 2 2008 - 10:06am

Old World, New World Large-Brained Simians Rose Independently From Common Smaller-Brained Ancestors

After taking a fresh look at an old fossil, John Flynn, Frick Curator of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, and colleagues determined that the brains of the ancestors of modern Neotropical primates were as small as those of their early ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2008 - 11:39am

Flatfish Fossils Fill Evolutionary Gap (like Why It Has Two Eyes On One Side Of Its Head)

Hidden away in museums for more that 100 years, some recently rediscovered flatfish fossils have filled a puzzling gap in the story of evolution and answered a question that initially stumped even Charles Darwin. All adult flatfishes--including the gastro ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2008 - 1:56pm

Kangaroos Shared Our Genetic Imprinting Mechanism 150 Million Years Ago

Genomic imprinting is a mechanism that regulates gene expression in the developing fetus and plays a major role in regulating its growth. Research published in Nature Genetics by a team of international scientists has established an identical mechanism of ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 15 2008 - 8:32am

Altenberg 2008: What Happened?

Below is the final statement emerging from the Altenberg workshop, agreed upon by all 16 participants. Individual commentaries about the workshop will be posted on the KLI web site, and MIT Press will publish the full proceedings by the end of 2009. A gro ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Jul 17 2008 - 4:06pm

Why They Call It Natural Selection- It Doesn't Always Produce The Best Organisms

"Survival of the fittest" is the catch phrase of evolution by natural selection. While natural selection favors the most fit organisms around, evolutionary biologists have long wondered whether this leads to the best possible organisms in the lo ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 17 2008 - 9:00pm