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...
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...
In 1996, Dean et al. (Science), demonstrated that a loss-of-function allele (CCR5Δ32) encoding a version of the chemokine receptor, CCR5, confers very substantial resistance to infection with HIV-1 in the homozygous state and slows progression in the heterozygous...
A paper recently appearing in Science (Näsvall et al. 2012) offers a new insights into the mechanisms by which gene duplication can lead to new genes, gene products, and functions. The new scheme is termed the innovation-amplification-divergence (IAD) model. The...
I recently had the opportunity to learn first-hand about the research of Robert Gatenby. Dr. Gatenby is a radiologist, but he is probably not your typical radiologist. He has been employing mathematical methods and the principles and concepts of evolutionary biology...
