Tag Archives: evolution

Crying

Posted on 30 April 2013 by Josh Witten | Leave a comment

Human population structure is such that it would require either (or both) a strong selection pressure or a big increase in fitness for natural selection to dominate the evolutionary dynamics. I submit as evidence that humans were not subject to intense selection pressure from predation one word: crying, specifically the crying of small children.

The idea that a primitive band of reproductively successful humans could remain hidden from things like leopards boggles the mind of this father. And, I have thought this for a long time, before I had children. It is in no way related to the fundamental conflicts generated by bed time and potty training in the mind of a two year old child. Nothing at all.

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Posted in Curiosities of Nature

Tagged Crying, evolution, natural selection, parenting

An argument between Dawkins & Wilson

Posted on 26 April 2013 by Josh Witten | 1 Comment

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal features an argument between Richard Dawkins and EO Wilson, with a cameo by Michael Lynch.

*I fear this may be a very inside evolutionary biology joke which greatly oversimplifies the positions held by all three individuals.

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Posted in Curiosities of Nature

Tagged EO Wilson, evolution, Linkonomicon, Michael Lynch, Richard Dawkins

Decoding ENCODE

Posted on 2 April 2013 by Josh Witten | 3 Comments

On Sunday, I participated in a panel discussion of the ENCODE project and issues related to it, with the folks from ScienceSunday via Google+ Hangouts. Ian Bosdet and I joined hosts Rajini Rao, Buddhini Samarasinghe, and Scott Lewis. to talk about ENCODE and make it accessible to those without a decade of post-graduate training in genomics If you have a spare 78 minutes, the discussion can be viewed on YouTube.

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Posted in Curiosities of Nature, Follies of the Human Condition, Items of Interest

Tagged ENCODE, evolution, Genetics

Cutting the second slide & Dollo’s “Law”

Posted on 12 March 2013 by Josh Witten | Leave a comment

A recent study on house dust mites has shown that the mighty mites have evolved “in reverse” from an obligate parasite into a free living organism. That is pretty cool. Yet, I find myself in the position once again of questioning the way the research is presented without questioning the quality of the research itself.

For permanent parasites and other symbionts, the most intriguing question is whether these organisms can return to a free-living lifestyle and, thus, escape an evolutionary “dead end.” This question is directly related to Dollo’s law, which stipulates that a complex trait (such as being free living vs. parasitic) cannot re-evolve again in the same form. Here, we present conclusive evidence that house dust mites, a group of medically important free-living organisms, evolved from permanent parasites of warm-blooded vertebrates. – Klimov & O’Connor 2013

The researchers present their result as a refutation of Dollo’s Law, which postulates that evolution is irreversible: Continue reading →

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Posted in Curiosities of Nature, Follies of the Human Condition

Tagged Dollo's law of irreversibility, evolution, House dust mite

Right Answer, Wrong Question

Posted on 8 March 2013 by Josh Witten | 10 Comments

Author’s Note: Post was written without access only to the abstract, not the full text, of the journal article in question. Note that the argument is not with the methods or results of the research, but with how the research question has been presented.

University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences tweeted the following tweet on Twitter today highlighting the work of post-doc Laure Ségurel on genetic risks for Type 2 Diabetes:

The work itself is interesting in its own right. Investigating the population genetic history of genetic markers associated with Type 2 Diabetes risk could have multiple applications, beyond the high level of intellectual interest.

The question used to frame the research, however, troubles me, because it plays to general misconceptions about the evolutionary dominance and efficiency of natural selection in humans:

Why is this deleterious disease so common, while the associated genetic variants should be removed by natural selection? -Ségurel et al (Eur J Hum Genet. 2013 Jan 23. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2012.295)

Continue reading →