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Darwin’s Evolution at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

Can you imagine the graphs that resulted from such a study? Money earned vs Fertility! Hah!

Well, it seems that someone did study this odd relation and the outcome was rather interesting – to say the least. The dancers made the most money while fertile and the amounts dropped during menstruation. Maybe related to PMS?

This study was performed based on evolutionary terms as stated in the article published in The Economist:

This theory is based on the idea that in evolutionary terms it benefits women to disguise when they are fertile so that their menfolk will stick around all the time. Otherwise, the theory goes, a man might go hunting for alternative mating opportunities at moments when he knew that his partner was infertile and thus that her infidelity could not result in children.

[Photo by .kaishin.]

Exotic dancers earn more when fertile

Such adaptation has great implications as regard to antibiotic resistance and how fast such resistance is gained by the evolving bacteria.
This ease of adaption brings higher attention to how antibiotics and drugs are administered and the way this high pace evolution can play a big threat to public health.

Although this study focuses on the evolution of bacteria, it shines some light on the way mutations take place over hundreds of generations, giving some insight on investigations in other areas like cancer development.

Update: More on this paper and beneficial mutations over at Genomicron

Bacterial adaptation 1000 times faster

PIÈCE DE (VIRUS) RESISTANCE

First up we have a great post from Cath Dunn from VWXTNot? that focuses on a couple of papers related to virus evolution and also mechanisms of host resistance to HIV. Great summaries and a great blog!

Keeping with HIV, Hsien Lei over at Eye on DNA wrote up a nice post focused on HIV-Resistance genes and how researchers can study the way HIV dodges the immune system in future vaccine development.

“JIMMY LEGS”

Dr. Deb and her “Jimmy Legs” are another hot topic where researchers have discovered what may well be the cause of Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). My friend Steve Murphy over at Gene Sherpa has his run-down on RLS and the research that was undergone.

THE FIRST TEN

Among the first ten elements to participate in the promising Personal Genome Project we can find Esther Dyson. Her participation and the low-down regarding the PGP can be found over at The Genetic Genealogist

Jason from The Personal Genome called my attention to this great comment made by Willy Lensch regarding these “First 10″

“Who knows how long it will take for personal genomes to become useful, but one thing is for certain, someday it will be said that it all started with the genomes of ten volunteers.”

Still at The Personal Genome, Jason is shocked by the lack of tools or a user interface for human genomes, but suggests a neat recipe.

Oh! And if you are wondering about the implications and related issues regarding the sequencing of your genome, BrainBlogger has a nice post on the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the threat of genetic discrimination.

SNPs AND WEB 2.0

Gene Genie founder himself, Berci from ScienceRoll presents us with yet another cool site based on the wiki system called SNPedia. The Gene Sherpa also has a nice review of this ever growing database of SNPs (Single nucleotide polymorphisms).

THE GENETICS OF AUTISM

Bioephemera has a great post on the subject of autism that starts off with an amusing comic strip (quite funny!). AutismVox also has a quick look into genetic “accidents” and autism.

BACK TO BASIC

Sometimes we get so caught up in our genomes and such that we forget to remember or even learn about the story of DNA. I really recommend this post series by Prof. Larry Moran at Sandwalk.

FINAL NOTES

I’m sad to say that I’ve been very very busy these last weeks and was unable to write anything worth including in this round of Gene Genie but will be contributing to this carnival with a neat logo that I’ll be working on with Berci over the next week of so. Stay tuned!

Also, this edition of Gene Genie comes a couple hours late for my European readers (it’s past midnight here in Portugal!). My apologies.

The next edition of Gene Genie will be on 12 August 2007 at The Genetic Genealogist.

Gene Genie #12 aka The Dozen

Now let’s imagine that a major publishing group like Nature already existed and that Mr. Darwin submitted his paper to them. They then showed this mind boggling paper to the contemporary specialists in the fields of biology.

I’d suspect that they would probably reject the absurd findings and conclusions conjured up by Darwin and thus, the peer revision would recommend the publishing group ignore the paper and trash it.

So, in a nutshell, if peer revision existed back then like it does nowadays, would Darwin’s (and let’s not forget about Wallace) theory of evolution make it into the limelight?

[Image: Wikipedia (Nature)]

Would peer revision give Darwin a chance?

It was lead by a Professor from a university other than mine and he went into a sort of chronological path since Darwin was around until nowadays with the school curriculum issues in Texas and such.

I found it to be an interesting talk specially because it was my first one related to this subject. I have only had the pleasure of following this subject on a couple blogs, podcasts and a couple of videos over at Youtube.

There were very few of us assisting, about a dozen. All students of the life science area. And guess what happened next…

There was this girl that kept interrupting the professor during the talk with odd questions and complaining about the content of certain slides. I just thought she was a nag. There’s always one or two in a class. But it turns out she would be much more than that…

After the 2 hour talk was finished, we have a short coffee break and then came back in to the room for a small debates where some of the typical questions regarding religion and science came about.

But then, the naggy girl got her chance to talk. She started to ramble on about nothing much for about 10 minutes before I could understand where she was trying to get, and then it hit me (and everyone in the room). She was a full throttle creationist, with all the IDiotic questions and answers that come along with the package.

The professor obviously had a lively conversation with her for about 30 minutes but every explanation to her questions sort of didn’t seem to get assimilated. It was like he was talking to a brick wall and she was blurting out her beliefs just for the sake of it.

Well, long story short, I found my first IDiot. Live and in color. Do you happen to know any?
PS: I should have asked her for her opinion on the FSM. That would have been fun…

[Photo: www.swarthmore.com]

ZOMG! I found one!!!!

Well, I just recently found out that Dilbert’s creator is might be a creationist.
Lost you there? Well, it seems that Mr. Scott Adams believes that Intelligent Design is responsible for everything around us, from Moby Dick to the Big Bang.

Scott’s latest posts have stirred a couple of waves and had some words sent back in a bottle from PZ Meyers. It’s more of the Evolution vs ID discussion going on at it’s best. This time it’s even more interesting because we’ve got the added Dilbert fans showing their piece of mind as well!

Someone should draw up a couple of strips about these episodes. I wonder what the pointy haired boss would have to say…

Dilbert’s Scott Adams and Intelligent Design

I’ve been following some of the Evolution vs ID controversy these days and it’s just impossible to not laugh when you read this sticker. Specially after some of these discussions and flames that I’ve been going through…

PS: I am in no way affiliated to StampAndShout. Just loved the sticker!

Evolution bumper sticker says we win!