Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / November 2007

I've looked, but didn't find answers . . . .
Any ideas about the smallest possible human gene pool that is
sustainable?
I'm probably using the wrong terms, so somebody please correct me.

Beyond hereditary mechanism, natural selection, random mutations,
etc., can the (coding and non-coding) DNA possibly also be affected by
our mental, psychological, emotional activity during our life? I there
any evidence? If not, can modern evolutionary biology exclude this for

Does Pheomelanin have some sort of influence in the production of
Vitamin D, for example?

New to this newsgroup, so bear with me.
I've done due diligence as far as trying to find an answer to this
question (google searches, various FAQs, even a college library), but
couldn't, so at any rate please forgive me if this is some old

Scientists make monkey cloning breakthrough
``The prospect of being able to clone human embyros
  efficiently for medical treatments has been raised
  by a technical breakthrough that has enabled scientists

I have heard the claim that all of the Burgess Shale "weird wonders"
have been shoehorned into existing phyla.  So, are there any extinct
animal phyla?

This is in response to a post from 1995 from Vincent Kargatis (http://
groups.google.com/group/sci.bio.evolution/browse_thread/thread/
b1d0710853056514/86283d72fd61313e?lnk=gst&q=experimental
+speciation&rnum=1#86283d72fd61313e), but I was unable to reply to

I believe that the recent thread concerning James Watson's
remarks about race and IQ needs to be looked at from an entirely
different point of view.
The great majority of people consider IQ to be a hereditary

I wanted to purchase a poster showing a high-level tree-of-life, a
cladogram illustrating evolution and cladistics.  But I searched and
searched and couldnt find one.   So I ended up drawing my own.  Anyone
is free to download it and print it, it is at:

This week, scientists publish images resolving molecules which have
organized themselves into patterns according to sizeThe automatic
molecular assembly and selection steps exhibited by the molecules,
which start as random mixtures, demonstrates a fundamental step in the

How does the poison of a pufferfish protect the pufferfish or
its closest kin? Why is the poison concentrated in the liver and
ovaries?
       The poison of a pufferfish concentrates in its liver and its

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/317/5834/116
So, this parasitic worm was thought to be the only multicellular
member of Myxozoa; it is now believed to be a cnidarian with a
superficial resemblance to bilateria.  My questions:

What does this mean?  In Roger Lewin's _Complexity: Life at the Edge of
Chaos_, in Chapter 7 "Complexity and the Reality of Progress", he
interviews Norman Packard and there is the following exchange:
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How did chemical constituents essential to life arise on primitive Earth?
Experiments show that simple molecules can combine chemically rather than
biologically to form the building blocks of DNA, the key component of all
life forms. These processes might have taken place on ...