Evolution

Cooperation has been/still is a major factor in the success of the human species, and in many others as well. Altruism and fairness are thought to play an important role in the development of…

Today's post in honor of the 2011 Cephalopod Awareness Days. October 9th is Nautilus Night.500 million years ago, at the time of the Cambrian Explosion, there was no life on land. The ocean…

This TED video of Christoph Adami is about life, and how to look for it. He begins by talking about the apparent difficulty in defining life (click here for a post about inorganic life) (funny that…

Males of many species guard the females they have mated with, a behavior generally interpreted as a tactic to reduce the likelihood that rival males will mate with the female. This, of course, can…

In which context did life arise? A problem yet unsolved. Several plausible ideas and hypotheses have been put forward: shallow seas, meteorites (see DNA, Made In Space?), and even much more extreme…

I didn't need to be persuaded that evolution happened. In fact, upon finding out in my teens that there were people that rejected it, I can say that my reaction was one of utter confusion. Why on…

A new study in Nature shows that genetic parasites invaded the mammalian genome more than 100 million years ago and dramatically changed the way mammals reproduce. The molecular changes allowed…

In a protein coding sequence of DNA, three subsequent nucleotides form codons (see figure 1), which, in turn, form amino acids that will eventually give rise to a protein. Some of these codons,…

New research that includes representatives of 99% of mammalian families, has provided a ‘big picture’ for mammalian phylogeny. By assembling a large and robust DNA matrix, based on sequences of many…

A hot new study in Nature has rearranged the molluscan family tree--with some surprising results! No one can deny that cephalopods (squids, octos, and cuttles) are the brains of the family, with…