This past December, science writer David Dobbs published an essay (2013) in the online magazine Aeon (aeon.co/magazine/) that purports to explain why the ‘selfish gene’ concept is outmoded and should be retired. It elicited a good deal of commentary, and in...
Biomedical scientists and biologists routinely consider how selection shapes the structure and function of proteins of interest. Less commonly, I suspect, do we consider how selection for attributes other than protein structure and function can favor or disfavor...
Three new papers (Kilpinen et al., 2013; McVickers et al., 2013; Kasowski et al., 2013) published earlier this month in Science all address the effects on human patterns of gene expression and other phenotypes of 1) genetic variation in non-protein coding regions of...
In his 1987 book, “The Evolution of Individuality,” Leo Buss addressed a fundamental biological question: “How could individual multicellular animals (known as metazoans), like sea anemones, insects, frogs, and humans arise?” Buss focused on a key challenge...
A central focus of recent research aimed at developing a vaccine for HIV-1 is the identification of potent broadly-neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). Due to work from several laboratories, many such antibodies have now been identified, produced in quantity as...