One of the most important questions in evolutionary biology today is how closely are genes and cultures linked. A new study in the latest issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution compares genetics and a heritable cultural marker: surnames. Just like Y chomosomes, surnames are (or were) paternally inherited, and should be strong markers of father-son [...]
Wang et al in PloS Genetics:
We examined genetic diversity and population structure in the American landmass using 678 autosomal microsatellite markers genotyped in 422 individuals representing 24 Native American populations sampled from North, Central, and South America. These data were analyzed jointly with similar data available in 54 other indigenous populations worldwide, including an [...]
The NY Times meets some Young Earth/Creationist Geologists, and discusses the increasing ‘respectability’ of Flood-Geology:
On a muggy afternoon in July, a group of geologists from around the country put on some bug spray and fanned out along one of Ohio’s richest fossil beds. The rock walls were slippery and steep at points, and some [...]
A quick psychology tidbit, Science has a fun little paper showing that Theory of Mind (the ability to infer the mental states of others) is independent to Episodic Memory (memories of discrete episodes):
Theory of mind (ToM) to infer other people’s current mental states and episodic memory of personal happenings have been assumed [...]
There’s a fascinating article in today’s New York Times by Amy Harmon on the new “personalized genome” companies where she talks about the ethics and impact on her life of getting her genome explored:
For as little as $1,000 and a saliva sample, customers will be able to learn what is known so far about [...]
A Garden Gnome Chomsky! Don’t miss the video… (thanks Andreea)
This looks like a cool paper – just out in PNAS – “The relative importance of directional change, random walks, and stasis in the evolution of fossil lineages“:
The nature of evolutionary changes recorded by the fossil record has long been controversial, with particular disagreement concerning the relative frequency of gradual change versus [...]
I’d like to be the first to welcome Alexei Drummond’s research group to the world blogging arena. Their new blog, Computational Biology and Evolution, proposes to be “a heady mix of computational science, evolutionary biology and other things that matter”.
Alexei’s interests are:
Statistical models and algorithms for understanding biomolecular sequence evolution, structure and [...]
This sounds most interesting -
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is recognized as the major force for bacterial genome evolution. Yet, numerous questions remain about the transferred genes, their function, quantity and frequency. The extent to which genetic transformation by exogenous DNA has occurred over evolutionary time was initially addressed by an in silico approach using [...]
