The Human Dynasty

Nashville police are looking for clues in the shooting death of Vanderbilt University anthropology professor Pierre Colas. His sister, Marie Colas was wounded. Graduate student Danielle Kurin told the press, “He went above and beyond what a professor is expected to do. He was like a friend and mentor, really a role model. In that [...]

Shedding some genetically induced excess baggage may have helped a tiny fish thrive in freshwater and outsize its marine ancestors, according to a new study in Science.

Without these tiny parasites and their genetic creativity, we’d be up the primordial creek without a paddle. investigates (full text available to subscribers)

Malaria didn’t evolve along with the animals it infects, say researchers – a shift in its evolution happened millions of years after vertebrates diversified

(DOE/Joint Genome Institute) The genome of the simple and primitive animal, Trichoplax adhaerens, appears to harbor a far more complex suite of capabilities than meets the eye. The findings, published August 21 online in the journal Nature, by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, establish a group of organisms as a branching point of animal evolution and identify sets of genes, or a “parts list,” employed by organisms that have evolved along particular branches.

For Charles Darwin, the problem of the peacock’s tail, in light of his theory of natural selection, was vexing in the extreme. A team of Wisconsin scientists has turned from the question of why such male traits exist to precisely how they evolved. They have worked out the molecular details of how a simple genetic switch controls decorative traits in male fruit flies and how that switch evolved.

Research into single-celled, aquatic algae called dinoflagellates is showing that these and related organisms may have evolved more than one way to tightly back their DNA into chromsomes. Even so, the evolution of chromosomes in dinoflagellates, humans and other mammals seem to share a common biochemical basis.

A new study of the ribosome, the cell’s protein-building machinery, sheds light on the oldest branches of the evolutionary tree of life and suggests that differences in ribosomal structure between the three main branches of that tree are “molecular fossils” of the early evolution of protein synthesis.

A new study of transfer RNA, a molecule that delivers amino acids to the protein-building machinery of the cell, challenges long-held ideas about the evolutionary history of protein synthesis.

(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) A new study of transfer RNA, a molecule that delivers amino acids to the protein-building machinery of the cell, challenges long-held ideas about the evolutionary history of protein synthesis.