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Daniel Dennett on why intelligent design isn’t science. “Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything.”
A small ocean microbe called Pelagibacter has the smallest genome of any self-sufficient organism with 1,354 genes. It also doesn’t appear to have any extra DNA…no junk or redundant copies of genes.
Interview with Frans de Waal about his work with primate behavior and politics. “I call the human species the most bipolar ape, meaning that we go beyond chimps in our violence, which is systematic and often results in thousands of dead, and we go beyond the bonobo in our empathy and love for others, so that human altruism is truly remarkable.”
Biologists are beginning to simulate living things by computer, molecule by molecule. They’re starting with E. coli, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
Newly discovered example of convergent evolution: frogs in Madagascar and South America who independently developed poisonous defense systems.
The club-winged manakin sings by playing its feathers like a washboard. Crickets do this, but the manakin is the first vertebrate observed to do it.
Butterfly team colors may discourage inter-species mating and pave the way for the development of separate species. “This process, called ‘reinforcement’, prevents closely related species from interbreeding thus driving them further apart genetically and promoting speciation.”
Male and female fire ants maintain their own independent gene pools. “The sperm of the male ant appears to be able to destroy the female DNA within a fertilized egg, giving birth to a male that is a clone of its father. Meanwhile the female queens make clones of themselves to carry on the royal female line.”
The Economist reports of the current state of biomimicry. Includes information about “biological patents”, which I’d never heard of before.
Researching quantum honeybees. Can bees detect quantum fields and use them to find food?
Biologically odd people are pushing the limits of what the human body is capable of. “In 2002, Lynne Cox swam to Antarctica, withstanding 32-degree water in only a swimsuit.”
Advancing scientific research means that chimeric animals are on the way. “In the case of human cells’ invading the germ line, the chimeric animals might then carry human eggs and sperm, and in mating could therefore generate a fertilized human egg. Hardly anyone would desire to be conceived by a pair of mice.”
Scientists at Princeton have made a crude computer out of bacteria. Earlier work showed “they could insert DNA into cells to make them behave like digital circuits [and] perform basic mathematical logic. The latest work expands this concept to vast numbers of bacteria responding in concert.”
Life’s top ten greatest inventions. Includes the eye, sexual reproduction, photosynthesis, and language.
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