Tag: evolution

Extended evolutionary synthesis

EES argues that while the existing framework of evolutionary theory, known as the “modern synthesis,” is basically solid, it needs to be expanded to account for newly recognized drivers of evolution. One such driver is epigenetics — gene-expression changes that stem from exposure to, say, pesticides. While these epigenetic changes are not encoded in an organism’s genes, they do give rise to physical and behavioral differences that natural selection can act upon. We now have a better picture of the regulatory process on genes. Epigenetics changes the landscape in genetics because it’s not only the pure DNA sequence which influences what’s going on at the level of proteins and enzymes. There’s this whole other stuff, the other 95 percent of the genome, that acts like rheostats — you slide this thing up and down, you get more or less of this protein. It’s a critical thing in how much of this protein is going to be made. It’s interesting to think about the way in which cultural phenomena, which we used to think were things by themselves, can have this effect on how much messenger RNA is made, and therefore on many aspects of gene regulation.

100 ka Modern Mind?

The combination of the oldest burial with grave goods; the preference for bright-red ochre and the apparent ability to heat-treat pigments to achieve it; and what are likely some of the earliest pieces of personal adornment—all these details make the people from Skhul good candidates for being our cognitive equals. And they appear at least 60 ka before the traditional timing of the “creative explosion.”

Evolutionary Biochemistry

Bloom and others are part of a growing group of scientists who practice “evolutionary biochemistry.” They seek to explain life’s tremendous diversity and determine exactly how that diversity emerged. Rather than focusing on how plants or animals adapted to different environments, however, these researchers consider diversity on a much smaller scale: Their work aims to explain how the small set of proteins that powered primitive life-forms evolved into the millions of specialized proteins that drive biological processes today.

Exploiting the genetic records, Bloom can assemble virus proteins that existed in bygone times, then reconstruct how they evolved, 1 amino acid at a time. Other researchers are analyzing modern species to resurrect the ancestral forms of biological molecules that have evolved over millions of years.

Does Stress Speed Up Evolution?

Skepticism hasn’t kept Rosenberg and Austin from seeking medical applications of their findings. 1 application is cancer. His experiments suggest that putting too much stress on cancer cells by hitting them with high doses of cancer drugs could accelerate their evolution to develop drug resistance. “We give the patients as much as they can tolerate, guaranteeing the emergence of resistant cancer cells”, adding that the current aggressive approach to cancer treatment has largely failed.

Intelligent Evolution

A computer scientist and biologist propose to unify the theory of evolution with learning theories to explain the “amazing, apparently intelligent designs that evolution produces.” “This simple step from evolving traits to evolving correlations between traits is crucial; it moves the object of natural selection from fit phenotypes (which ultimately removes phenotypic variability altogether) to the control of phenotypic variability. Learning theory is not just a different way of describing what Darwin already told us. It expands what we think evolution is capable of. It shows that natural selection is sufficient to produce significant features of intelligent problem-solving.”

Creationist evolution

creationist bills mutate, with being passed as the fitness function. heh.

Some 90 years out from the Scopes Monkey Trial, and a full 10 years after the legal defeat of “intelligent design” in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the fight to teach creationism alongside evolution in American public schools has yet to go extinct. On the contrary, a new analysis in the journal Science suggests that such efforts have themselves evolved over time—adapting into a complex form of “stealth creationism” that’s steadily tougher to detect.

Coywolf evolution

The coywolf has evolved in the last ~100 years.

It is rare for a new animal species to emerge in front of scientists’ eyes. But this seems to be happening in eastern North America

2022-06-02: Evolution seems to be faster, perhaps in general, than expected.

The study is the first time the speed of evolution has been systematically evaluated on a large scale, rather than on an ad hoc basis. The team used studies of 19 populations of wild animals from around the world. These included superb fairy-wrens in Australia, spotted hyenas in Tanzania, song sparrows in Canada and red deer in Scotland.
“The method gives us a way to measure the potential speed of current evolution in response to natural selection across all traits in a population. This is something we have not been able to do with previous methods, so being able to see so much potential change came as a surprise to the team. Whether species are adapting faster than before, we don’t know, because we don’t have a baseline. We just know that the recent potential, the amount of ‘fuel’, has been higher than expected, but not necessarily higher than before. Evolution cannot be discounted as a process which allows species to persist in response to environmental change.”