08 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Evolutionary Biology and the Punk Scene
Evolutionary biology historically has focused on a particular kind of change in heritable traits. Some traits enable an organism to have more offspring than other organisms in a population. In this way, a heritable trait can become more abundant in the next generation. It's a simiple numbers game. New traits appear first in a single organism (like the debut songs on a pioneering punk album). But they can appear in increasing numbers of organisms with each :h new generation if they help organi...An interesting comparison, that demonstrates the natural selection of memes in culture works the same as genes in biological fitness.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Bacteria Evolve to Process Lactose in a Test Tube
But “laboratory” adaptations can also be more complex, involving
the evolution of whole new biochemical systems. Perhaps the ultimate
challenge is simply to take away a gene that a microbe needs to survive
in a particular environment, and see how it responds. Can it evolve
a way around this problem? The answer is usually yes. In a dramatic
experiment, Barry Hall and his colleagues at the University of Rochester
began a study by deleting a gene from E. coli. This gene produces an
enzyme th...Folksonomies: evolution experiment
Folksonomies: evolution experiment
Scientists blocked a gene for digesting lactose in bacteria, which then mutated to have the digestive function taken over by another gene producing an enzyme, which then got progressively selected for efficiency.