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Sponge Genes Hint at the Origins of Neurons and Other Cells
...but also have many of the same genes. Sponges are among the earliest branching lineages on the evolutionary tree of animal life; their simple bodies don’t even have a pattern...
Tiny Tweaks to Neurons Can Rewire Animal Motion
Altering a protein in the neurons that coordinate a rattlesnake’s movement made a slow slither neuron more like a speedy rattle neuron, showing one way evolution can generate new ways...
Genetic Struggles Within Cells May Create New Species
...other,” said Elina Immonen, an evolutionary geneticist and researcher at Uppsala University. “Males and females also might have different evolutionary interests.” The mismatch of evolutionary forces on mitochondrial and nuclear...
Researchers Rethink the Ancestry of Complex Cells
...details of later ones and inferring their evolutionary relationships. Right now is “an incredibly exciting time” for such research, said Michelle Leger, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Evolutionary...
New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life
...in translation, the synthesis of proteins — a finding that came as a shock. “It appears that giant viruses are as complex as living organisms,” said Chantal Abergel, an evolutionary...
Viruses Have a Secret, Altruistic Social Life
...at a severe disadvantage under natural selection. William D. Hamilton, one of the 20th century’s most prominent evolutionary theorists, developed a mathematical theory to explain the evolution of altruism through...
How Neutral Theory Altered Ideas About Biodiversity
...College London. Kimura’s neutral theory of molecular evolution sparked debate because it seemed to water down the influence of selection. But the genomics revolution of the late 20th century and...
In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem
...world. These studies were the world’s first experimental demonstration of Darwinian evolution at the molecular level — “evolution by natural selection, survival of the fittest,” said Eugene Koonin, a National...
The Mystery of the Missing Multicellular Prokaryotes
...flaw in the way many people were thinking about evolution. It is easy to assume that evolution is synonymous with natural selection, the force that weeds out less advantageous forms...