HENRY

This week’s Wednesday wiki page is on Coalescent Theory:

coalescent theory states that all genes or alleles in a given population are ultimately inherited from a single ancestor shared by all members of the population, known as the most recent common ancestor. If the inheritance relationships are written in the form of a phylogenetic tree, termed a gene genealogy, the gene or allele of interest is said to undergo coalescence to the common ancestor (sometimes termed the concestor to emphasize the coalescent relationship).

Continued at Wikipedia

From the always interesting Neatorama, the world’s Strangest Dinosaur names:

JURASSOSAURUS NEDEGOAPEFERIMA
Ah, the (limited) power of money: Steven Spielberg, who gave money toward Chinese dinosaur research, suggested the name Jurassosaurus after his 1993 blockbuster movie Jurassic Park. The species name nedegoapeferima is formed from the surnames of the movie’s main stars: Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, Ariana Richards, and Joseph Mazzello.

Dong Zhiming, the paleontologist who discovered the dinosaur, later discarded the genus name Jurassosaurus in favor of Tianchiasaurus [wiki], but kept the species name honoring the actors.

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ScienceDaily reports:

Smithsonian researchers and colleagues report that across the Americas, chili peppers (Capsicum species) were cultivated and traded as early as 6,000 years ago—predating the invention of pottery in some areas of the Americas. The researchers analyzed starch grains to trace the history of chili peppers in the Americas.

The original paper, Perry et al is in Science:

Chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) are widely cultivated food plants that arose in the Americas and are now incorporated into cuisines worldwide. Here, we report a genus-specific starch morphotype that provides a means to identify chili peppers from archaeological contexts and trace both their domestication and dispersal. These starch microfossils have been found at seven sites dating from 6000 years before present to European contact and ranging from the Bahamas to southern Peru. The starch grain assemblages demonstrate that maize and chilies occurred together as an ancient and widespread Neotropical plant food complex that predates pottery in some regions. (Abstract)

Edward Ocampo-Gooding at Science Creative Quarterly:

In analyzing our own cognitive evolution, we often end up trying to pigeonhole a version of a human/animal chimera into the “just beneath” human position. This usually ends up distorting everything (humans, ancestry, ape relatives) and does not work towards an end of knowing why other species think differently than humans, or why only humans are suspected of having language.

Go to Comparison of theories on the origin of Language

Charlie Hatton at SCQ decides to scientifically test cliché‘s about love:

HYPOTHESIS #1. “All we need is love.”

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We chose an experimental male subject that had been engaged in a long-term, healthy, loving relationship for many years. The subject was removed from his native environment, stripped naked, and dropped onto a barren patch of Arctic tundra without food, protection from the elements, or means of communication. The subject was afforded only ‘love’, in the form of a parcel of romantic letters written by his sweetheart.

(Yes, it’s late, but I’ve been off conferencing.)

Wang et al in PLoS Biology:

Brain-expressed genes are known to evolve slowly in mammals. Nevertheless, since brains of higher primates have evolved rapidly, one might expect acceleration in DNA sequence evolution in their brain-expressed genes. In this study, we carried out full-length cDNA sequencing on the brain transcriptome of an Old World monkey (OWM) and then conducted three-way comparisons among (i) mouse, OWM, and human, and (ii) OWM, chimpanzee, and human.

Although brain-expressed genes indeed appear to evolve more rapidly in species with more advanced brains (apes > OWM > mouse), a similar lineage effect is observable for most other genes.

Continue reading Rate of Evolution in Brain-Expressed Genes in Humans and Other Primates