Finding suggests the bird transition from air to water may have been easier than thought
Scientists Discover a New Population of Blue Whales by Their Unique Song
They first heard the ‘previously unreported’ song in 2017, leading to the discovery of a new population that’s been hiding in the Indian Ocean.
Source: Scientists Discover a New Population of Blue Whales by Their Unique Song
Despite ‘Meager Numbers,’ Trump Administration Removes Gray Wolves From Endangered Species List
“The delisting of gray wolves is the latest causality of the Trump administration’s willful ignorance of the biodiversity crisis and scientific facts.”
Octopus And Squid Evolution Is Officially Stranger Than We Could Have Ever Imagined
They… edit their own genes.
Source: Octopus And Squid Evolution Is Officially Stranger Than We Could Have Ever Imagined
Frontiers of ID: Microscopic Ecologies
Public health lecturer James Hamblin at Yale decided to go without showers — for five years!
Source: Frontiers of ID: Microscopic Ecologies | Evolution News
Evolution of fold switching in a metamorphic protein | Science
Most proteins have stable, folded structures, but there are rare examples of metamorphic proteins that can switch between two different folds that may each have a different function. Dishman et al. investigated the evolution of XCL1, which is a member of the chemokine family that interconverts between the chemokine fold and a second, noncanonical fold that forms dimers. The authors used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to investigate the structures of inferred evolutionary ancestral sequences. Their results suggest that XCL1 evolved from an ancestor with the chemokine fold and then transitioned to prefer the noncanonical fold before reaching the modern-day metamorphic protein.Science , this issue p. [86][1]Metamorphic proteins switch between different folds, defying the protein folding paradigm. It is unclear how fold switching arises during evolution. With ancestral reconstruction and nuclear magnetic resonance, we studied the evolution of the metamorphic human protein XCL1, which has two distinct folds with different functions, making it an unusual member of the chemokine family, whose members generally adopt one conserved fold. XCL1 evolved from an ancestor with the chemokine fold. Evolution of a dimer interface, changes in structural constraints and molecular strain, and alteration of intramolecular protein contacts drove the evolution of metamorphosis. Then, XCL1 likely evolved to preferentially populate the noncanonical fold before reaching its modern-day near-equal population of folds. These discoveries illuminate how one sequence has evolved to encode multiple structures, revealing principles for protein design and engineering. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abd8700
Source: Evolution of fold switching in a metamorphic protein | Science
Discovery boosts theory that life on Earth arose from RNA-DNA mix: Newly described chemical reaction could have assembled DNA building blocks before life forms and their enzymes existed — ScienceDaily
Chemists have made a discovery that supports a surprising new view of how life originated on our planet. They demonstrated that a simple compound called diamidophosphate (DAP), which was plausibly present on Earth before life arose, could have chemically knitted together tiny DNA building blocks called deoxynucleosides into strands of primordial DNA.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life Gets an Update
Taking into account what we really know about exoplanets would help refine the search by focusing on signals that must represent life.
Source: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life Gets an Update | Mind Matters
Darwin Is on the Roof
Books by Behe, and other ID theorists doing an independent of audit of evolutionary thinking, find devastating faults in the theory.
Source: #7 Story of 2020: Darwin Is on the Roof | Evolution News
