Lemur boon?

Nature online yesterday announced a lemur boon. Perhaps lemurs are good for agriculture or tourism. Or perhaps the lemurs want a favor. Oh, the number of lemurs has increased. That’s a boom.

I have a coffee mug that says, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip—Hire a freelance editor.” Everything we write is a first draft—but only editors and authors seem to know it. You wouldn’t believe the number of typographical errors I’ve edited out of these few sentences. And I know that Murphy and Murphy’s Law (and gremlins) will always be with us. But keep on trying. Proofread each other’s work. Hire the damned editor. “In the war between the author and the editor, winner should be the reader.”

See also “Firefox: the musical.”

More genetic variability for evolution to work on

From an article in the Globe and Mail:

An international research team has overturned the harmonious message that flowed from the Human Genome Project in 2000 and discovered more DNA differences exist among people than the experts expected.

Using new technology to study the genomes of 270 volunteers from four corners of the world, researchers have found that while people do indeed inherit one chromosome from each parent, they do not necessarily inherit one gene from mom and another from dad.

One parent can pass down to a child three or more copies of a single gene. In some cases, people can inherit as many as eight or 10 copies. In rare instances a person might be missing a gene.

Yet despite these anomalies, they still appear to be healthy — countering the notion of what doctors have deemed “normal” in genetics.

The work highlights how DNA helps to make each human unique, hinting that a towering basketball player, for example, might boast extra copies of a growth gene…

Said Steve Scherer, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and study co-author:

“The genome is like an accordion that can stretch or shrink . . . so you have no idea what’s normal.”

The Sick Kids team worked on the project for more than two years with scientists at Harvard Medical School, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England, the University of Tokyo and the California-based Affymetrix Corp.

Their research finds that the size of at least 12 per cent of the genome — including 2,900 genes and regions between them — can differ dramatically between people, and in some cases, between certain ethnic groups.

The size differences are the result of DNA that is either duplicated or deleted or contains unexpected added bits of genetic code. Scientists call the phenomenon “copy number variation” or CNV for short. And it is already reshaping genetic research.

Robert Hegele, a noted genetic scientist at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ont., who read the study, says:

“When we’re accounting for what the human genome means, there’s not going to be a single human genome map that is going to be useful to one person. It’s a huge surprise that there’s so much variation of this type . . . that is so common in so many healthy people.”

Sorry to be so unoriginal, but life has been busy and I don’t have time to do the proper research and write things up.

Biology teachers speak out

The U.S. National Association of Biology Teachers has this to say about teaching evolution:

As stated in The American Biology Teacher by the eminent scientist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973), “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This often-quoted declaration accurately reflects the central, unifying role of evolution in biology. The theory of evolution provides a framework that explains both the history of life and the ongoing adaptation of organisms to environmental challenges and changes.

While modern biologists constantly study and deliberate the patterns, mechanisms, and pace of evolution, they agree that all living things share common ancestors. The fossil record and the diversity of extant organisms, combined with modern techniques of molecular biology, taxonomy, and geology, provide exhaustive examples of and powerful evidence for current evolutionary theory. Genetic variation, natural selection, speciation, and extinction are well-established components of modern evolutionary theory. Explanations are constantly modified and refined as warranted by new scientific evidence that accumulates over time, which demonstrates the integrity and validity of the field.

Scientists have firmly established evolution as an important natural process. Experimentation, logical analysis, and evidence-based revision are procedures that clearly differentiate and separate science from other ways of knowing. Explanations or ways of knowing that invoke non-naturalistic or supernatural events or beings, whether called “creation science,” “scientific creationism,” “intelligent design theory,” “young earth theory,” or similar designations, are outside the realm of science and not part of a valid science curriculum.

The selection of topics covered in a biology curriculum should accurately reflect the principles of biological science. Teaching biology in an effective and scientifically honest manner requires that evolution be taught in a standards-based instructional framework with effective classroom discussions and laboratory experiences.

—Adopted by the NABT Board of Directors, 1995. Revised 1997, 2000, and May 2004. Endorsed by: The Society for the Study of Evolution, 1998; The American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 1998.