Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / October 2008

This is just to alert you about scientific discussion of a new book:
'Evolution in Health and Disease'
Edited by Stephen Stearns and Jacob Koella, Oxford University Press,
2008

Now$B!$(BI have a project about DNA methylation and I am looking for the
materials.
I wonder whether DNA methylation is common in Bacteria or Yeast, and
which kind of material is more suit for the DNA methylation research,

A sequel to my 2002 essay - on the subject of living systems
maximising entropy production:
 http://originoflife.net/gods_utility_function/
Enjoy,

Folkadeedliedoo:
My entire family unit and I -- well, not the dog -- will be
spending about 17 days in Costa Rica in November. I am aware
that there is internet access, often quite good internet access,

I read about the slime mold, which is actually not a mold but a "city"
of one-celled slime mold cells, each can separate and act
independently.
Can someone give me some other examples of this?  Of one-celled

Can genetic information be controlled by light?
Researchers at Kiel University have succeeded in showing that DNA strands
differ in their light sensitivity depending on their base sequences. Their
results are reported by Nina Schwalb and colleagues in the current issue of

Green florescent protein (GFP) has revolutionized research in medicine
and biology, enabling scientist to get a visual fix on how organs
function on the spread of disease and the response of infected cells
to treatment,GFP has a typical beta barrel structure, consisting of

Mysterious Snippets Of DNA Withstand Eons Of Evolution
ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2008) - Small stretches of seemingly useless DNA
harbor a big secret, say researchers at the Stanford University School of
Medicine. There's one problem: We don't know what it is. Although individual

This excerpt from MATCMadison,edu on absorbing UV light.
http://matcmadison.edu/biotech/resources/methods/labManual/unit_4/exercise_15.htm
"Most biological molecules do not intrinsically absorb light in the visible range, but they do absorb ultraviolet light. Biologists take ...

"Treasure Your Exceptions" The Science and Life of William Bateson, by
Alan G. Cock & Donald R. Forsdyke (Springer, New York, September 2008)
William Bateson brought the work of Mendel to the attention of the
English-speaking world and commanded the biological sciences in the

We are now finding life not at the bottom of the sea, but way underneath the sea. It may be a sizable percentage of all life.
I ask the SBE group this question. Does anyone know if the genomes of these undersea bacteria, have UV repair mechanisms.
I ask that to see if they are land ...

Most origin scenarios have a replicator pop up - a single fluke event. Then
if they are honest they'll admit the odds of this happening are so
astronomical that it didn't happen or really couldn't happen.
I suggest that a more plausible scenario is this:

Rsearch has shown that some birds and primates produce formants (time-
varying acoustic energy bands) in their vocalizations by manipulating
the supralaryngeal vocal tract, a talent formerly thought to be
uniquely human. Does this constitute an argument against evolutionary

Meteorite experiment deals blow to 'bugs from space' theory
A novel experiment has dealt a setback to a theory that life on Earth was
kickstarted by bacteria that hitched a ride on space rocks.
The "pan-spermia" hypothesis is that cells were transported to the infant

Have you ever seen a scientific related image and thought "wow, that's
just beautiful!"?
I came across a couple of university internal "art of science"
competitions where scientists present images from their research and