Lemarckism

LANDMARK Adelaide research showing that sperm and eggs appear to carry genetic memories of events well before conception, may force a rethink of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, scientists say.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/darwins-theory-of-evolution-challenged-by-university-of-adelaide-genetic-memory-research-published-in-journal-science/story-fni6uo1m-1227024901078?nk=e7b68832df47eabebb50623482591195

Darwinism and the Nazis

Nazi racial theorists did indeed embrace human and racial evolution. They not only taught that humans had evolved from primates, but they believed the Aryan or Nordic race had evolved to a higher level than other races.

http://www.csustan.edu/history/faculty/weikart/darwinism-in-nazi-racial-thought.pdf

Junk DNA

Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From ‘Junk,’ Play Crucial Role

The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.The findings, which are the fruit of an immense federal project involving 440 scientists from 32 laboratories around the world, will have immediate applications for understanding how alterations in the non-gene parts of DNA contribute to human diseases, which may in turn lead to new drugs.As scientists delved into the “junk” — parts of the DNA that are not actual genes containing instructions for proteins — they discovered a complex system that controls genes. At least 80 percent of this DNA is active and needed.The discoveries were published on Wednesday in six papers in the journal Nature and in 24 papers in Genome Research and Genome Biology. In addition, The Journal of Biological Chemistry is publishing six review articles, and Science is publishing yet another article.Human DNA is “a lot more active than we expected, and there are a lot more things happening than we expected,” said Ewan Birney of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute, a lead researcher on the project.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark-matter-proves-crucial-to-health.html?_r=0

Noncoding gene linked to autism

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/2012/noncoding-gene-linked-to-autism

Predictions

If the human genome is devoid of junk DNA then ... evolution cannot explain the human genome.

http://twileshare.com/askq

Mutations

"It's incredibly rare," Schal said. "We don't know any other example where instead of having a loss of function, you had a gain of a new function.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/24/science/la-sci-cockroaches-sugar-20130524

Stasis

A fossil that once lined a mule track in Iraq has revealed the surprising survival of a group of ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that swam the seas more than 66 million years ago. 

Researchers had previously believed that ichthyosaurs declined throughout the Jurassic Period, which lasted from 199 million to 145 million years ago, with the only survivors rapidly evolving to keep ahead of repeated extinction events. The new fossil, however, dates from the Cretaceous Period, which lasted from 145 million to 66 million years ago. It looks remarkably like its Jurassic brethren, revealing a surprising evolutionary [stasis].

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/15/18280065-fossil-reveals-surprising-survival-of-marine-reptile?lite

Alteratives

Cladistics (Ancient Greek: κλάδος, klados, "branch") is an approach to biological classification in which items are grouped together based on whether or not they have one or more shared unique characteristics that come from the group's last common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors. Therefore, members of the same group are thought to share a common history and are considered to be more closely related.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics

Tree of Life

Charles Darwin's tree of life is 'wrong and misleading', claim scientists 

Dr Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, said: "For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality."

"It's part of a revolutionary change in biology. Our standard model of evolution is under enormous pressure."

"The tree of life is being politely buried – we all know that. What's less accepted is our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/4312355/Charles-Darwins-tree-of-life-is-wrong-and-misleading-claim-scientists.html

Predictive Power

Cosmologists make precise predictions about what will happen to the universe in 20 billion years' time. Biologists struggle to predict how a few bacteria in a dish might evolve over 20 hours.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13677-evolution-myths-evolution-is-not-predictive.html

Cloning

Sorry, you will never ride, see or pet a cloned dinosaur 

It’s been years since cloned animals first appeared, so why aren’t we able to reach back to the Cretaceous yet? Well, this isn’t just a question of improving our current cloning methods. We lack the fundamental materials to clone anything from 65 million years ago. Taking into account the influence of Hollywood, you could be forgiven for thinking that dinosaur blood is flowing like rivers in labs all over the world. The fact is, we don’t have dino DNA.
We also lack an intact dino nucleus to take up residence in a cell. You can’t grow a dinosaur with just a pile of DNA.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133802-sorry-you-will-never-ride-see-or-pet-a-cloned-dinosaur

DNA has a 521-year half-life 

Few researchers have given credence to claims that samples of dinosaur DNA have survived to the present day, but no one knew just how long it would take for genetic material to fall apart. Now, a study of fossils found in New Zealand is laying the matter to rest — and putting an end to hopes of cloning a Tyrannosaurus rex.
By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on.
“This confirms the widely held suspicion that claims of DNA from dinosaurs and ancient insects trapped in amber are incorrect,” says Simon Ho, a computational evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. However, although 6.8 million years is nowhere near the age of a dinosaur bone — which would be at least 65 million years old — “We might be able to break the record for the oldest authentic DNA sequence, which currently stands at about half a million years,” says Ho.

http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555

Darwin Abandoned

We aren’t using Darwin’s model anymore; he had no accurate notion of how inheritance worked, for instance — genes and alleles, the stuff of most modern theory, are not present anywhere in his works.“Darwinian” is also problematic. It does have a specific, technical meaning, but it’s often applied thoughtlessly to every process in evolution.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/19/oh-god-yes-yes/

Speed of Evolution

Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island
"Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows.
In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html