Mutation and evolution

Month: October 2014

  • Mendelian-Mutationism: the Forgotten Evolutionary Synthesis

    What is Mendelian-mutationism?  And why do we argue in a recent paper in that it represents a forgotten evolutionary synthesis (Stoltzfus and Cable, 2014, Mendelian-Mutationism: The Forgotten Evolutionary Synthesis. J Hist Biol. doi:10.1007/s10739-014-9383-2)? For me, the story started a long time ago with our theoretical demonstration (graph at right) that bias in the…

  • The surprising case of origin-fixation models

    In a recent QRB paper with David McCandlish, we review the form, origins, uses, and implications of models (e.g., the familiar K = 4Nus) that represent evolutionary change as a 2-step process of (1) the introduction of a new allele by mutation, followed by (2) its fixation or loss. What could…

  • Going global with phylogeny: the tree-for-all hackathon

    Earlier this year, the Open Tree of Life project made the first public release of its synthetic tree of 2.5 million species (from ~4000 source trees), and announced a web services API (Application Programming Interface) providing programmatic access to a continually updated set of resources: a synthetic tree covering millions of species a database of thousands of source trees a reference taxonomy used…

  • The Curious Disconnect: Introduction

    This is a far-too-long introduction to a blog series that I started in 2010.  Now I’m ready to start it up again.  The themes will still be the same— but hopefully I have learned a bit about stating things more succinctly. Striking a chord The title of this blog — The…

  • When “Darwinian adaptation” is neither

    Getting stuff right Early in the evolution of the Sequence Ontology, it was noted (by gadflies like myself) that SO asserts the relationship of mRNA to gene to be the “part of” relationship.  This is obviously wrong.  An RNA molecule is not part of a DNA molecule.   Saying that mRNA is part of a gene is like…

  • The Great Non-Debate on Evolutionary Theory (Nature, Oct 2014)

    Some of you may have noticed a recent exchange in Nature on the question of whether evolutionary biology needs a re-think. The online article does not make clear the alignments of the listed authors, but those arguing in favor of a re-think are: Kevin Laland, Tobias Uller, Marc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka,…

  • Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (book review)

    Last year I read James Shapiro’s Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (2013, FT Press) along with 2 other recent books, Nei’s Mutation-Driven Evolution and Koonin’s The Logic of Chance.  All 3 fall into the category of recent books by seasoned researchers whose primary focus is molecular, and who argue that…

  • Theory vs. Theory

    What does it mean to invoke “evolutionary theory”? Is “neo-Darwinism” (or “Darwinism”) a theory, a school of thought, or something else? What gives a theory structure and meaning?  Can a theory change and, if so, how much?  What is the relationship between mathematical formalisms and other statements of “theory”? Who…

  • The Mutationism Myth (2): Revolution

    Our journey began with The Mutationism Myth, part 1.  Then, in Theory vs Theory, we took a brief detour to distinguish theoryC (concrete, conjectural) from theoryA (abstract, analytical).  Today we are back to the Mutationism Myth and our goal is to probe its claim that the scientific community rejected Darwin’s…

  • The Mutationism Myth (1): The Monk’s Lost Code and the Great Confusion

    This is the first in a series of blogs first published in 2010 on Sandwalk. The mutationism myth tells the story of how, just over a century ago, the scientific community responded to the discovery of Mendelian genetics by discarding Darwinism, and how Darwinism subsequently was restored.  In this, the…