A recent paper on miRNA got me thinking about when I started to get interested in the micro mechanisms of biology. Specifically, it reminded me of a fundamental misunderstanding that I had about biology that, when corrected, suddenly allowed things to make a lot more sense. It’s one of the cooler (and maddeningly illogical) aspects of molecular biology. I think that understanding it will help clear up a lot of people’s confusion about how genes and evolution work.

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It’s time to talk about the basics: big honkin’ fossils of things long dead. Much of the discussion of evolution revolves around the very small: genes, cells, and the like. One loses sight of the larger effects of selection over time. That would be the changes in species. That’s were transitional forms come in.

There are two terms that get used: “transitional” and “intermediate”. They tend to get used interchangeably, though there is a difference. That difference isn’t really important here, so I will just plow ahead.

Aside from the fact that transitional forms are manifest in cool organisms that are weird blends of dinosaur/bird, ungulate/whale, and ape/human, they are also helpful in illustrating a couple of key points about evolution.

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Today is the 200th birthday of the man who came up with an idea that defies superlatives. People have been trying for about 150 years to come up with a way to express just how truly bad-ass his idea was. 

Charles Darwin is the man and the idea in question is, of course, natural selection. I have posted a few things before about evolution, but it seems appropriate today to talk specifically about natural selection.

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“Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.”
- Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics

It’s been longer than I’d like since I posted another in my (pathetically small) series on the cooler aspects of evolution, written for the poseur dilettante layman, like me. 

Since it’s been a while, and since I posted something recently that touched on evolution, I figured I would shake it up and write about some of the really not cool aspects of evolution.

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So I’ve recently mentioned spear-wielding chimps, chromosomally endowed chimps, and archaic homo cousins. So you might guess that I have an interest in human evolution.

Well I do. And it’s about time we talked about some of the cool stuff in there. There’s a lot in there, so I’ll just hit some of the high points that I find pretty fantastic.

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One of the cool things about genomics (the rules for how your DNA works) is that it’s pretty well ordered. Biology is messy, even at the molecular level—there are thousands of bits and pieces in a cell that are all floating around each other, combining, moving, and generally making unholy chaos. But your DNA is a pretty deterministic system.

Mostly.

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[I have a certain fascination for evolution and the biological mechanisms thereof. I'm far from an expert - just a curious layman - and I figure that others could become similarly inclined if they knew some of the cooler aspects of the science. So every now and then, I hope to post about some items in evolution, microbiology, and genomics that, in my opinion, fit the bill.]

So you’ve probably heard that humans and chimps share 98% of our DNA (or sometimes it’s 98% of our genes, or 95% or some other number - it depends on what you count and how you count it, but that’s another story). What does that mean? Doesn’t matter right now. Stop worrying about it. Vague notions of something you don’t understand being similar to other things you don’t understand aren’t helping. But this can: you’re a chimp with a messed up chromosome.

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