by Richard William Nelson | Mar 13, 2012
The “Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence” report, published by the British journal Nature this last week, stands as a historical milestone in the study of human origins, sequencing the gorilla genome.
Aylwyn Scally (pictured right below) at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute led the research team to complete the gorilla genome sequence project, the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. The use of gorilla genome sequences, Scally explains –
“Will promote a deeper understanding of great ape biology and evolution.”
The findings change the evolution narrative.
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Nov 28, 2010
Craig Venter, the maverick American biologist and businessman, captured worldwide attention by announcing the creation of “the first synthetic species,” nicknamed “Synthia.” Venter has the credentials. In 2000, Venter, along with Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health, jointly announced the complete mapping of the human genome.
In a 60-Minute CBS interview with Steve Kroft (pictured right), in the aired TV segment entitled “J. Craig Venter: Designing Life,” CBS touted that Venter’s new synthetic species “gets its genetic instructions from a synthetic chromosome made by man, not nature.”
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Aug 29, 2010
Jerry Coyne, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True, conveniently overlooks any reference to the butterfly, as does Darwin-Discovering the Tree of Life by Niles Eldridge.
Even the California-sponsored website “Understanding Evolution” skirts around the mysterious transformation of the butterfly known as metamorphosis – a butterfly nightmare.
Depictions of mystical butterfly symbols have embellished Egyptian, Chinese, and Greek cultural expressions for over 3,500 years. Why is the evolution industry silent on butterfly metamorphosis?
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Aug 15, 2010
The evolution industry is celebrating 100 years of fruit fly genetic research. Charles W. Woodworth, at the University of California, Berkeley, at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first to use the fruit fly as a model in the study of genetics.
During the twentieth century, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, was one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics.
The fruit fly model seemed to emerge as one of the first laboratory-induced speciation events.
Continue Reading
by Richard William Nelson | Jun 27, 2010
Faced with the failure of the Stanley-Urey model to explain the origin of life, evolutionary scientists have been exploring the RNA World theory. With only the four nucleic acids required to form RNA (pictured left) rather than the twenty amino acids to form a protein, the chance probability tipped the advantage to the RNA-first theory, but that is not all.
In The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins explains –
“This is the RNA World. To see how plausible it is, we need to look at why proteins are good at being enzymes but bad at being replicators; at why DNA is good at replicating but bad at being an enzyme; and finally why RNA might just be good enough at both roles to break out of the Catch-22.”
Continue Reading
The “Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence” report, published by the British journal Nature this last week, stands as a historical milestone in the study of human origins, sequencing the gorilla genome.
Craig Venter
Jerry Coyne
The evolution industry is celebrating 100 years of fruit fly genetic research. 
Faced with the failure of the 