population genetics

Plant tissue

Waiting Longer for Two Mutations

An interesting paper appeared recently in an issue of the journal Genetics, “Waiting for Two Mutations: With Applications to Regulatory Sequence Evolution and the Limits of Darwinian Evolution” (Durrett, R & Schmidt, D. 2008. Genetics 180: 1501-1509). As the title implies, it concerns the time one would have to wait for Darwinian processes to produce some helpful biological feature (here, Read More ›

Photo by Tadeusz Lakota

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Upon learning of an employee’s defection to a rival company, one prominent CEO launched a chair across the room. Commenting on the incident in the Washington Post, eminent primatologist Frans de Waal noted that the CEO acted like an ape. But de Waal (and the Post for that matter) wasn’t kidding; he took this incident as further proof of common Read More ›