A popular misconception challenged
July 15th 2008 17:15
In this fascinating article by PZ Myers in Seed Magazine, the view that humans sit atop a Mount Everest of "perfect design" is debunked with a look at a supposedly more humble denizen of the animal kingdom, the fugu fish. Its lessons are both fascinating and pertinent to our view of ourselves.
Random acts of evolution
by PZ Myers, May 30 2008
An excerpt: "It is disconcerting for us to discover that our cells aren't well-honed, efficient machines dedicated to making just the important stuff of us, but rather are carting around massive quantities of useless bric-a-brac and debris. Which brings us back to the fugu. Its genome is a tiny 365 million bases, one-eighth the size of the human genome, and the fugu genes take up a full third of that sequence (rather than 5 percent), while the repetitive DNA has been reduced to a sixth of the total (rather than 45 percent). Yet fugu aren't missing anything, and are as sophisticated and complex on the cellular, tissue, and organismal level as other vertebrates. What's the source of the difference?"
Continue reading here
Random acts of evolution
by PZ Myers, May 30 2008
An excerpt: "It is disconcerting for us to discover that our cells aren't well-honed, efficient machines dedicated to making just the important stuff of us, but rather are carting around massive quantities of useless bric-a-brac and debris. Which brings us back to the fugu. Its genome is a tiny 365 million bases, one-eighth the size of the human genome, and the fugu genes take up a full third of that sequence (rather than 5 percent), while the repetitive DNA has been reduced to a sixth of the total (rather than 45 percent). Yet fugu aren't missing anything, and are as sophisticated and complex on the cellular, tissue, and organismal level as other vertebrates. What's the source of the difference?"
Continue reading here
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