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Genome Duplication Is a Radical Evolutionary Gamble
...the evolutionary benefit of doubled genes. In 1970, the Japanese American geneticist Susumu Ohno had published Evolution by Gene Duplication, which posited that the duplication of individual genes was an...
Why Are Rivers So Mathematical?
...every place to a single place (the sea, a heart, a city center). Of the various examples, rivers are especially revealing, I think, since they arise from neither biological evolution...
Why Am I Left-Handed?
...Why are 90% of people right-handed? An astronomical amount of research has gone into trying to find out. Geneticists, developmental biologists, behavioral and cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary biologists all...
Is Life Just Different?
...but to explore whether it can be a scientifically productive idea. To say that living things are goal-directed isn’t really a controversial statement. Biologists ranging from the evolutionary theorist Ernst...
For the First Time, a Cell Built From Scratch Grows and Divides
...4 billion years ago, a bunch of nonliving molecules got together to form the first protocells. They fed, grew, and divided. Then, over time, evolutionary processes emerged that let these...
Why the Human Genome’s Tangled Physicality May Confound AI
...genome is no blueprint or algorithm. It is something else. The Old View Given that it’s the product of around 4 billion years of evolution, perhaps it’s not surprising that...
What’s the Future of Gene Editing?
...function, what they’re doing inside of cells. But taking knowledge like that and trying to weave it into a story that explains evolution or even just explains biology as we...
An Early Step on the Long, Strange Road to Photosynthesis
An ancient lineage of cyanobacteria is helping biologists uncover an early evolutionary stage of the mind-boggling process that turns light into life. Every second, trillions of watts of solar energy...
How Ecotypes Harbor the Genetic Memory of a Species’ Past
...On the Origin of Ecotypes Over the years, evolutionary biologists have debated whether ecotypes are a first step in the evolution of new species. Are thick- and thin-shelled snails, marine...