Sandwalk

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 ...

This is so frustrating. I've been debating creationists for almost 30 years. My colleagues and I have tried time and time again over tho...

The human apolipoprotein E gene (ApoE) has several alleles segregating in the human population. One of them, E4, is associated with increas...

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...

Ann Gauger was reading a cell paper the other day [ Digging Deep in Biology: "Things Get Even More Complicated When You Look Closer&quo...

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 m...

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...

"Epigenetics" is the (relatively) new buzzword. Old-fashioned genetics is boring so if you want to convince people (and grant agen...

With a current population size of over 7 billion, the human population should contain a huge amount of genetic variation. Most of it resides...

De novo genes 1 are quite rare but genome duplications are quite common. Sometimes the duplicated regions contain genes so the new genome ...

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 ...

Michael Lynch is giving a seminar next week on Friday, January 13, 2017 in the Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University o...

I'm a big fan of teaching fundamental concepts and principles and a big fan of teaching critical thinking. I think the most effective wa...

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 evolut...

Every year John Brockman asks his stable of friends an interesting question. Brockman is a literary agent and most of the people who respond...