Tag: Evolutionary

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2011) In a new study, scientists at the University of Maryland and the Institut Pasteur show that bacteria evolve new abilities, such as antibiotic resistance, predominantly by acquiring genes from other bacteria.

The researchers new insights into the evolution of bacteria partly contradict the widely accepted theory that new biological functions in bacteria and other microbes arise primarily through the process of gene duplication within the same organism. Their just released study will be published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January 27.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2010) A George Washington University expedition to the Gobi Desert of China has enabled researchers to solve the puzzle of how one group of dinosaurs came to look like birds independent of birds. The discovery extends the fossil record of the family Alvarezsauridae -- a bizarre group of bird-like dinosaurs with a large claw on the hand and very short, powerful arms -- back 63 million years, further distancing the group from birds on the evolutionary tree.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2010) About eight percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to researchers in Japan and the U.S.

The study, and an accompanying News & Views article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor Cיdric Feschotte, is published in the journal Nature.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2010) Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have determined for the first time that prions, bits of infectious protein devoid of DNA or RNA that can cause fatal neurodegenerative disease, are capable of Darwinian evolution.

The study from Scripps Florida in Jupiter shows that prions can develop large numbers of mutations at the protein level and, through natural selection, these mutations can eventually bring about such evolutionary adaptations as drug resistance, a phenomenon previously known to occur only in bacteria and viruses. These breakthrough findings also suggest that the normal prion protein -- which occurs naturally in human cells -- may prove to be a more effective therapeutic target than its abnormal toxic relation.