Category: Genetics

If turtles are closer to birds than to lizards and snakes, genetically, then …

Doesn’t this raise some questions about conventional accounts of evolution? more

If geneticist James Shapiro is never respectable again, philosopher James Barham is not to blame

Doubting Darwin is. more

Are humans riddled with rare genetic variants?

“The findings suggest that researchers will need to revamp their current methods for deciphering gene function, … ” more

Y chromosome durability: AKA secret sex worries of science writers

“Y chromosomes are here to stay, and are not the genetic wasteland that they were once thought to be.” more

David Abel: Formalism not only describes, but preceded, prescribed, organized, and continues to govern and predict Physicality.

“Chance, necessity and mere constraints cannot steer, program or optimize algorithmic/ computational success to provide desired nontrivial utility.” more

He said it, so we didn’t have to: Telling a human from an ape

“It is not that difficult to tell a human from an ape, after all. The human is the one walking, talking, sweating, praying, building, reading, trading, crying, ” more

DNA: More than one percent of Scottish men are direct descendants of the Saharan Berber and Tuareg tribes?

Yet the Scots manage to be culturally distinctive, as anyone who has lived through Robbie Burns Day in small-town Canada will know. more

New York Times piece: “There’s not a grain of real science in it that’s worth putting on the front page”

… “that irritating combination of sophomoric facetiousness and pious credulity that is unique to science journalism” more

This just in: We are 99.5% gorilla …

“… much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.” more

Three dimensional chromosome arrangements can affect genetics

The Darwinist needs to get out more. more

“At least 1 percent of human genes can be shut down without causing serious disease.”

Will they end up being called “vestigial genes”? more

Jerry Coyne’s hilarious takedown of Chris Mooney’s new “yer politics is in yer genes” book

“‘Compelling evolutionary logic,’ of course, is not data: it’s just the perceived ability to make a convincing story. ” more

Transposable elements are the new “junk DNA”? May have function ….

“It seems, then, that there is positive selection for transposable elements at these sites, suggesting that insertion has a beneficial effect on the host.” more

Remember that Fate of Darwinism paper? Here’s what it says on Dawkins’ selfish gene …

“…. When all other things are actually made equal by spelling out in detail the developmental process by which genes express traits, any self-replicative privilege assigned to genes disappears completely.” more

Why you are not your genes, and even your genes are not “your genes”

In those days, Nobelist Walter Gilbert, extolling the Human Genome Project, would hold up a data CD and inform his audience, “This is you.” A genome decoded. But was it you? Or anybody? more

ID Foundations 15(c) — A FAQ on Front-Loading, thanks to Genomicus

Onlookers, Geno concludes for the moment with FAQ’s: ____________________ Geno: >> A Testable ID Hypothesis: Front-loading, part C In the last two articles on front-loading, I explained what the front-loading hypothesis is all about and some research questions we can ask from a front-loading perspective. This article will be an FAQ about the front-loading hypothesis.… more

ID Foundations, 15(a): A Testable ID Hypothesis — Front-Loading, part A (a guest-post by Genomicus)

(Series on Front-loading continues, here) As we continue the ID Foundations series, it will be necessary to reflect on a fairly wide range of topics, more than any one person can cover. So, when the opportunity came up to put Front-Loading on the table from a knowledgeable advocate of it, Genomicus, I asked him if… more

What Is Life? Part III: What Might an Organism Be, If Not a Machine?

“You cannot explain the physical interactions occurring in living things through the direct application of physical laws alone.” more

There is no brilliance in mechanism and reductionism any more.

Mechanists and reductionists just bypass the hard math questions and award themselves a prize, cheered on by their equally tenured fellows, and increasingly irrelevant to what happens. more

A bioscience newsletter that isn’t spouting Darwin?

Maybe the newsletter staff will hereafter be harassed to Darwin pieties in order to prove their submission, and it will be interesting to see how that turns out. more

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