I submitted my grades on Thursday morning and they were approved by the Department of Biochemistry in short order. Once the final grades have been approved and submitted to the Faculty they… Read More

I leave tomorrow for Chicago where I'm attending Experimental Biology 2017. Is anyone else going to be there? Wanna get together? I'm there until Wednesday Read More

Contact me by email if you'd like to meet him on Sunday, April 30th Read More

How can alleles be fixed in a population by positive natural selection (i.e. adaptation) if the environment remains constant for thousands of years? Question #1, Question #2, Question #3, Qu… Read More

Many people believe that recombination evolved because it increases genetic variation in a population and this provided a selective advantage over species that didn’t have recombinatio… Read More

More than 90% of our genome is transcribed when you add up all the transcripts from various cell types and various times of development (= pervasive transcription). Many biologists take this… Read More

The Three Domain Hypothesis has eukaryotes and archaea branching off from eubacteria. It shows eukaryotes more closely related to archaea than to eubacteria. However, many scientific studies… Read More

The paper by Andrews et al. (2011) lists a number of common misconceptions held by their students. One of them is the idea that, “Evolution is a process that will never stop, even in t… Read More

Eugene Koonin described his view of the proper null hypothesis for evolutionary questions. One of the examples he used concerns the evolution of recent gene duplications (Koonin, 2016 p.5)… Read More

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The battle invovled four divisions of the Canadian Corps and it has become a symbol for Canada of the sacrific… Read More

A few years ago, Tomasetti and Vogelstein (2015) published a paper where they noted a correlation between rates of cancer and the number of cell divisions. They concluded that a lot of cance… Read More

Do you think this video is helpful? [see "What Is Evolution?"] Is it important to know that evolution requires genetic changes and that it's populations that evolve? Is it important to have… Read More

Charlie McDonnell is the author of a book called Fun Science: A Guide To Life, The Universe And Why Science Is So Awesome. He made a video on misconceptions about the theory of evolution (se… Read More

I'm working (slowly) on a book called What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk! The first chapter is an introduction to genomes and DNA [What's in Your Genome? Chapter 1: Introduci… Read More

I'm working (slowly) on a book called What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk! The first chapter is an introduction to genomes and DNA [What's in Your Genome? Chapter 1: Introduci… Read More

I'm working (slowly) on a book called What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk! I thought I'd post the TOC for each chapter as I finish the first drafts. Here's chapter 1.Chapter 1… Read More

I'm working (slowly) on a book called What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk! I thought I'd post the TOC for each chapter as I finish the first drafts. Here's chapter 2.Chapter 2… Read More

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York. Like many physicists, he thinks he's smart enough to know everything about everything so he doesn't hesitate to lectur… Read More

There are two competing worldviews in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology. The distinction was captured a few years ago by Laurence Hurst commenting on pervasive transcription w… Read More

There's an interesting video of ten famous women scientists at Interesting S_Word: [Top 10 Female Scientists of History]. The image of Rosalind Franklin caught my eye (see right).Perhaps I'm… Read More

If you want to be a serious participant in the debate over junk DNA then you should watch this video. Dan Graur presents the standard arguments for junk DNA—most of which have been aro… Read More

A reader directed me to a 2015 ENCODE workshop with online videos of all the presentations [From Genome Function to Biomedical Insight: ENCODE and Beyond]. The workshop was sponsored by the… Read More

Today is Darwin Day but I'm too busy with other things to write a new post in his honor. So here's a post from 2007 (slightly updated) to help you enjoy the day.Today is the birthday of the… Read More

ENCODE researchers answered a bunch of question on Reddit a few days ago. I asked them to give their opinion on how much junk DNA is in our genome but they declined to answer that question… Read More

Check out Science AMA Series: We’re Drs. Michael Keefer and James Kobie, infectious .... (Thanks to Paul Nelson for alerting me to the discussion.)Here's part of the introduction ...Ye… Read More

I think philosophy has lost its way. The discipline gives credence to religious philosophers who write about god(s) and to other philosophers who reject determinism and think the mind-body p… Read More

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Watch Ricky Gervais explain atheism to Stephen Colbert. I like his explanation of the difference between science and religion. In fact, I like it so much I'm going to embellish it a bit and… Read More

Nick Lane is very good at explaining complex biology and biochemistry. He is the winner of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for 2016. Here's his lecture. It's worth watching if you… Read More

Otangelo Grasso is a creationist who's convinced he can learn to understand biochemistry by reading what's on the internet and copy-pasting it into his website. He then takes that limited kn… Read More

It's not Saturday morning but you can enjoy this cartoon anyway.Tom Bethell ... writes like a dream.          &nbsp   &nb&hell…Read More

Photosynthesis is the series of reactions that capture light energy and use it to make ATP and sometimes reducing equivalents (e.g NADPH). There are many different versions of photosynthesis… Read More

I just realized that I don't have a post devoted to the evolution of the citric acid cycle. This need to be remedied since I often talk about it. It's a good example of how an apparently irr… Read More

This is so frustrating. I've been debating creationists for almost 30 years. My colleagues and I have tried time and time again over those three decades to educate them about real evolutiona… Read More

The human apolipoprotein E gene (ApoE) has several alleles segregating in the human population. One of them, E4, is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer's. Ed Yong, writing for The At… Read More

I'm working on a chapter about pervasive transcription and how it relates to the junk DNA debate. I found a short review in Nature from 2002 so I decided to see how much progress we've made… Read More

Ann Gauger was reading a cell paper the other day [Digging Deep in Biology: "Things Get Even More Complicated When You Look Closer"]. The subject was the localization of citric acid cycle en… Read More

I enjoyed listening to Michael Lynch's talk on Friday. Much of what he said has been covered in Sandwalk over the past few years. His main point was that nothing in biology makes sense excep… Read More

Here's a link to a remarkable radio interview with Stephen Meyer and Doug Axe. The subject is the Royal Society meeting last November on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philo… Read More

"Epigenetics" is the (relatively) new buzzword. Old-fashioned genetics is boring so if you want to convince people (and grant agencies) you're on the frontlines of research you have to say y… Read More

With a current population size of over 7 billion, the human population should contain a huge amount of genetic variation. Most of it resides in junk DNA so it's of little consequence. We wou… Read More

De novo genes1 are quite rare but genome duplications are quite common. Sometimes the duplicated regions contain genes so the new genome contains two copies of a gene that was formerly prese… Read More

Genome sequencing is becoming so routine that it's difficult to publish your new genome sequence in a top journal. The trick is to find something unique and exciting about your genome so you… Read More

Michael Lynch is giving a seminar next week on Friday, January 13, 2017 in the Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. The title is: Mutation, Drift, and the… Read More

I'm a big fan of teaching fundamental concepts and principles and a big fan of teaching critical thinking. I think the most effective way of accomplishing these objectives is some form of st… Read More

A reader alerted me to a paper that was just published in BMC Biology.1 The author is Eugene Koonin. He makes the case for neutral evolution (random genetic drift) and against adaptationism… Read More

Every year John Brockman asks his stable of friends an interesting question. Brockman is a literary agent and most of the people who respond are clients of his. (I want to be one.) The quest… Read More

My most popular post last year was: An Intelligent Design Creationist disputes the evolution of citrate utilization in the LTEE ... Lenski responds. It had almost 20,000 views and 227 commen… Read More

Yesterday I posted an article on: Creationists list the top ten stories of 2016 . Some of you may have noticed that there were only nine stories. That's because Evolution News & Views di… Read More

Intelligent Design Creationists are still trying to promote their views. They consistently claim to have positive evidence of intelligent design and they consistently complain whenever we po… Read More

The frequency of blood type O is very high in some populations of native Americans. In many North American tribes, for example, the frequency is over 90% and often approaches 100%. A majorit… Read More

The lead editorial in last week's issue of Nature (Dec. 8, 2016) urges us to Take the time and effort to correct misinformation. The author (Phil Williamson) is a scientist whose major resea… Read More

ENCODE1 published the results of a pilot project in 2007 (Birney et al., 2007). They looked at 1% (30Mb) of the genome with a view to establishing their techniques and dealing with large amo… Read More

A reader pointed me to the ThermoFisher Scientific website. ThermoFisher Scientific is a major supply of scientific equipment and supplies. They created their life sciences wesite to help in… Read More

It's been twenty years since Michael Behe published Darwin's Black Box and Intelligent Design Creationists are flagellating themselves over the fact that it had so little impact on creationi… Read More

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is a collection of Humanist, atheist, secular and similar organizations from many countries. It publishes the Freedom of Thought Report, w… Read More

We've been having a discussion about function and how to recognize it. This is important when it comes to determining how much junk is in our genome [see Restarting the function wars (The Fu… Read More

The term "function wars" refers to debates over the meaning of the word "function" in biology. It refers specifically to the discussion about junk DNA because junk DNA is defined as DNA that… Read More

Humans have about 25,000 genes. About 20,000 of these genes are protein-coding genes.1 That means, of course, that humans make at least 20,000 proteins. Not all of them are different since t… Read More

There weren't many science writers are the Royal Society meeting in London (UK) [New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives]. Carl Zimmer w… Read More

The recent meeting at the Royal Society in London was organized by The Royal Society (UK) and The British Academy. The theme of the meeting was, "New trends in evolutionary biology: biologic… Read More

Many evolutionary biologists are engaged in research that focuses on large organisms that are (presumably) adapting to a local environment. These "field biologists" are mostly concerned with… Read More

Many science writers complain about the ability of scientists to explain their work to the general public. The latest example is from Susan Matheson, a science writer with a Masters degree i… Read More

This is our first visit to Scotland. We rented an apartment in the top floor of this house in the middle of the city. It's a 20 minute walk to the port (Leith) and about the same distance to… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employs a number of scientists who work on genes and gene expression. Here's part of a press release published two days ago [For Normal Heart Functi… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

I will be attending the Royal Society Meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. I'll post each of the abstracts and ask for yo… Read More

Random genetic drift is a process that alters allele frequencies within a population. The change is due to "random" events. It differs from natural selection where the change is due to selec… Read More

A theology student named Derrick has written a review of Jerry Coyne's book Faith vs. Fact. He didn't like it very much. (Duh!) You can read his review at: Jerry Coyne, Faith Vs. Fact: Why S… Read More

A recent issue of New Scientist (Sept. 3-9) is billed as "The Metaphysics Issue: How science answers philosophy's deepest questions." This is probably not going to make philosophers happy.Se… Read More

Does this video contribute to the general understanding and appreciation of science?Blond hair: PROBABLY FALSE ADAPTATIONLactose tolerance: PROBABLY A TRUE ADAPTATIONEating wheat: PROBABLY F… Read More

Are you surprised to hear a religious person say that science and religion are not in conflict? Of course you aren't. That's just what you expect religious people to say.Why in the world wou… Read More

Michael Egnor doesn't like atheists. He got a bit upset about a recent post by PZ Myers so he responded on Evolution News & Views (sic) with: Atheism Is a Catastrophe for Science.Modern… Read More

Meet Bruce Buff. He's a big fan of the Discovery Institute as he explains in this video.Bruce Buff has written a novel (fiction) called The Soul of the Matter. The Intelligent Design Creatio… Read More

A large percentage of the human genome is transcribed at some time or another during development. The vast majority of those transcripts are very rare transcripts that look very much like sp… Read More

Triose phosphate isomerase (TIM) is one of the enzymes in the gluconeogenesis pathway leading to the synthesis of glucose from simple precursors. It also plays a role in the degradation of g… Read More

It's been about twenty years since Intelligent Design Creationism rose to prominence. Just last week the Center for Science and Culture celebrated it's 20th birthday [Twenty Years Ago Today… Read More

I came across this paper while doing research on alternative splicing. The introduction annoyed me. It illustrates what to my mind are some serious problems with modern scholarship.Scotti, M… Read More

ScienceDebate.org is a group that wants a "science" debate between Presidential candidates in the upcoming American election. That's not going to happen so the next best thing is to demand t… Read More

Some of us have been debating Intelligent Design Creationists for many years. Some of us have even visited the creationist blogs like Uncommon Descent where we discover that no facts and no… Read More

Thanks to PZ Myers for digging up this speech by Mike Pence in the House of Representatives [Mike Pence, creationist]. I think Pence is trying to make America great again by returning the co… Read More