Category: Genomics
Geoff Barnard Delivers Unwelcome News For Darwinism
| August 25, 2011 | Posted by Jonathan M under Evolution, Genetics, Genomics |
Dr Geoff Barnard summarizes the evidence for his claim that the biggest challenge to Darwinism is not the survival of the fittest but rather the maintenance of fertility. more
Interactome? Well, remember genome, proteome, old folks home …
| August 3, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Genomics, Intelligent Design |
Interactome? Well, remember genome, proteome, old folks home … Old folks home? (For not-quite-dead-enough yet ideas like Darwinism) more
Guy who DOESN’T support ID: Genomics has “overturned” Darwin’s iconic Tree of Life
| July 19, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Genomics |
Guy who DOESN’T support ID: Genomics has “overturned” Darwin’s iconic Tree of Life more
Are exosomes the new “junk DNA”?
| July 13, 2011 | Posted by News under Genomics |
In “Exosome Explosion” (The Scientist , July 1, 2011), Clotilde Théry tells us “These small membrane vesicles do much more than clean up a cell’s trash—they also carry signals to distant parts of the body, where they can impact multiple dimensions of cellular life”: Secreted vesicles known as exosomes were first discovered nearly 30 years… more
Popcorn: How much of the genome is transcribed?
| July 13, 2011 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design |
All? Some? None? Clark et al., The Reality of Pervasive Transcription: Current estimates indicate that only about 1.2% of the mammalian genome codes for amino acids in proteins. However, mounting evidence over the past decade has suggested that the vast majority of the genome is transcribed, well beyond the boundaries of known genes, a phenomenon… more
Biophysics: Long DNA terminal repeats have wrapping function, researcher finds
| July 13, 2011 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design |
In “Kinky genes: Biophysics of DNA affects how it works” (New Scientist, 08 July 2011), MacGregor Campbell reports DNA is typically a long double-helical strand that can expose its sequences of base pairs. These are translated by RNA and particles called ribosomes into proteins, which do the cell’s work. When not in use, DNA wraps… more
Most life forms show S pattern in chromosome lengths, guess which one doesn’t?
| July 12, 2011 | Posted by News under Genomics |
From “Chromosomes’ Big Picture: Similarities Found in Genomes Across Multiple Species; Platypus Still out of Place” (ScienceDaily, July 11, 2011), we learn: “Basically what this all means is that if the chromosome number of a species can be given, the relative sizes of all the chromosomes can instantly be known,” Yu said. “Also, if you… more
Redwood trees’ genes differ from top to bottom
| July 10, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Genetics, Genomics |
From “Environs Prompt Advantageous Gene Mutations as Plants Grow; Changes Passed to Progeny” (ScienceDaily, July 5, 2011) we learn: If a person were to climb a towering redwood and take a sample from the top and a sample from the bottom of the tree, a comparison would show that the two DNA samples are different.Christopher… more
A statistical comparison of two human genomes
| May 23, 2011 | Posted by niwrad under Genomics, Intelligent Design |
In a previous post I provided a statistical test to compare chimpanzee and human genomes. As you can read there, the post generated a very interesting discussion among the readers, and it seemed to me that the general feeling at the end was that my statistical method for performing genome-wide comparisons might have some merit,… more
Genome duplication and the limits of evolution
| May 6, 2011 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics |
“Genome Duplication Encourages Rapid Adaptation of Plants” (ScienceDaily, May 4, 2011) While nearly all animals have two sets of chromosomes — one set inherited from the maternal parent and the other inherited from the paternal parent — many plants are polyploids, meaning they have four or more chromosome sets. “Some botanists have wondered if polyploids… more
Coffee!! Intelligent design found in DNA of a bacterium!
| May 1, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Genetics, Genomics |
Of course, it was put there by a Canadian poet. Recently we learned that “An original piece of “living poetry” has been created in a lab in Canada.” Christian Bok encoded some of his verse into a DNA strip and got it inserted into an E.coli bacterium: Dr Bok used cryptography to embed his poem… more
“Evolution,” we are told, “can cause a rapid reduction in genome size”
| May 1, 2011 | Posted by News under Genomics |
From the Max Planck Institute, we learn (April 21, 2011): Despite being closely related to the lyre-leaved rock cress, the thale cress has a considerably smaller genomeIt would appear reasonable to assume that two closely related plant species would have similar genetic blueprints. However, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen,… more
Should we always say it twice?: Identical twins are not really identical
| March 30, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Genomics, Intelligent Design |
From “No Two of Us Are Alike — Even Identical Twins: Pinpointing Genetic Determinants of Schizophrenia”, (ScienceDaily, March 28, 2011) we learn Singh looked at about one million markers of identical twins (and their two parents) where only one twin had schizophrenia. “The most informative feature of schizophrenia is that it sometimes runs in the… more
Diversity driven by imprinting, not selfish gene?
| March 28, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Genomics |
In this article in The Scientist, “Imprinting Diversity”, Cristina Luiggi interviews Joachim Messing about ways in which genomic imprinting may be a strong driver of diversity: Sexual reproduction yields offspring with two copies of the same gene, one from each parent; but in an epigenetic phenomenon known as genomic imprinting, only one copy of certain… more
Genomics: Hox Paradox described
| February 21, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Genomics |
A friend put me onto a “neat” summation of the “Hox paradox” in Bioscience last year: “Taken together, these findings presented researchers with a paradox. On one hand, the basic machinery underlying early development, such as the Hox genes, is widely conserved among divergent phyla. But at the same time, these genes also underlie the… more
Coffee!!: Sound of bubble bursting – getting real about genomic medicine
| February 21, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Genomics |
From ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2011) this news, “Promise of Genomics Research Needs a Realistic View, Experts Urge” Unrealistic expectations about genomic medicine have created a “bubble” that needs deflating before it puts the field’s long term benefits at risk, four policy experts write in the current issue of the journal Science. Ten years after the… more
Remember when the genome map was supposed to prove we were just apes?
| February 10, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Genomics |
Or sea slugs? Like, humans had 100, 000 genes, which proved we were a big-brained ape, then 30, 000, a bit more than a worm. Oh but wait, the fern has 250,000 genes and someone who has never kept a fern can be confident that they’re mostly junk. Now, ten years on, here’s the kind… more
World-record genome
| October 11, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Biology, Genomics |
SCIENCE: “Now THAT’s a genome. A rare Japanese flower named Paris japonica sports an astonishing 149 billion base pairs, making it 50 times the size of a human genome—and the largest genome ever found. Until now, the biggest genome belonged to the marbled lungfish, whose 130 billion base pairs weighed in at an impressive 132.83… more
Sanford’s pro-ID thesis supported by PNAS paper, read it and weep, literally
| September 30, 2010 | Posted by scordova under Creationism, Darwinism, Evolutionary biology, Genomics |
Cornell Geneticist John Sanford argued that Darwinism is wrong because the rate of genetic deterioration is so high that natural selection could not arrest it. If natural selection cannot arrest genetic deterioration, how then could it be the mechanism for evolutionary improvement? Sanford predicted through his research that human genome is deteriorating. This was a… more
A simple statistical test for the alleged “99% genetic identity” between humans and chimps
| September 27, 2010 | Posted by niwrad under Genomics, Informatics, Intelligent Design |
Typical figures published in the scientific literature for the percentage similarities between the genomes of human beings (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) range from 95% to 99%. However, in press releases intended for popular consumption, evolutionary biologists frequently claim that human and chimpanzee genomes are 99% identical. Skeptics of neo-Darwinian evolution have repeatedly punctured… more