MetaFilter posts tagged with evolution and dna

cluck cluck cluck BAWK! ROAR!!

Pants! — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:03:28 -0800

When and if the dinochicken is created, Horner looks forward to bringing it out on a leash during lectures. (book)

Darwin, extended

digaman — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:50:28 -0800

The "blind watchmaker" may not be as blind as we thought. A team of scientists at Princeton University discovers that organisms are not only evolving, they're evolving to evolve better, using a set of proteins to "steer the process of evolution toward improved fitness" by making tiny course corrections.

Small tweak to DNA may have given us our unique hands

homunculus — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:35:36 -0800

Fingering What Make Us Human: Did a gene enhancer humanise our thumbs?

Down

chuckdarwin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:08:33 -0800

The Genius of Charles Darwin Warning: Dawkins haters, click away now. And, yes: eponysterical.

Termites are cockroaches!

Citizen Premier — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:09:26 -0800

Termites are Cockroaches.

The origin of life?!

insomnia_lj — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 03:53:30 -0800

The origin of life?! I heard from an authority in molecular biology today that a group of researchers funded by the Carnegie Institution and NASA believe they've discovered the origin of RNA, and with that, the origin of life. This new discovery grew out of NASA's Deep Impact mission to study the composition of comets. Specifically, they started investigating a kind of carbon that forms in layers, with each layer slighly offset from the previous one in a helix shape. Significantly, the thickness of these carbon layers corresponds with the thickness of each twist in a strand of RNA. It turns out that the individual building blocks of RNA are capable of bonding to this layered carbon when exposed to UV radiation. Once this has happened, apparently formaldehyde can then bond to the building blocks of RNA on the carbon "pattern", allowing the bonded RNA to slough off into the primordial soup. Over time, some of these RNA strands could fold and bond to themselves, forming DNA. Formaldehyde, the initial bonding material, would eventually be replaced by a more chemically sophisticated substance, creating the chemical bond that we observe today in DNA. Expect a paper on it to be released in approximately three months with all the details.

lagado — Thu, 11 Jan 2001 04:00:27 -0800

DNA analysis of a 60,000-year-old skeleton from Lake Mungo in Australia throws doubt on the "Out of Africa" theory of human evolution.