Genetic Drift is More Important than Natural Selection

[Motoo Kimura] has been the chief advocate of the neutral theory of evolution. The neutral theory says that, through the history of life from beginning to end, random statistical fluctuations have been more important than Darwinian selection in causing species to evolve. Evolution by random statistical fluctuation is called genetic drift. Kimura says that genetic drift drives evolution more powerfully than natural selection.

 The Genetic Drift of Languages

Just as some species are more similar than others and are placed in the same family, so there are also families of languages. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and many European languages and dialects such as Romansch, Galician, Occitan and Catalan are all pretty similar to each other; together they're called 'Romance' languages. The name actually comes from their common origin in Latin, the language of Rome, not from any association with romance, but let's use an expression of love as nr ...

 1.5 Percent Gene Difference Translates to Thousands of Pr...

But recent work shows that our genetic resemblance to our evolutionary cousins is not quite as close as we thought. Consider this. A 1.5 percent difference in protein sequence means that when we line up the same protein (say, hemoglobin) of humans and chimps, on average we’ll see a difference at just one out of every 100 amino acids. But proteins are typically composed of several hundred amino acids. So a 1.5 percent difference in a protein 300 amino acids long translates into about four di...