Thu 4 Sep, 2008
Two fascinating articles on my newsreader today:
Yale researchers find ‘junk DNA’ may have triggered [sic]
Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as “junk DNA.”
Molecular evolution echoed in bat ears
Echolocation may have evolved more than once in bats, according to new research from the University of Bristol published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Junk DNA” was once considered just that: genetic material of no consequence to the organism, a useless remnant of prior evolutionary states. Once it was evidence against design; now it’s evidence of evolution. Interesting how that happens.
Meanwhile, the evolution of echolocation is a marvel of natural history. For it to have happened twice in one genus is even more marvelous, even (perhaps) incredible, especially since (as the linked article notes) “Examples of convergence at a molecular level are very rare.”
Also meanwhile, other assumptions keep falling…
