kallend 2,175 #1 December 23, 2005 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4552466.stm By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter Evolution is not just something that scientists study as an esoteric enterprise Research into how evolution works has been named top science achievement of 2005, a year that also saw fierce debate erupt over "intelligent design". The prestigious US journal Science publishes its top 10 list of major endeavours at the end of each year. The number one spot was awarded jointly to several studies that illuminated the intricate workings of evolution. The announcement comes in the same week that a US court banned the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms. Adherents of intelligent design, or ID, maintain that many features of the Universe and of living things are too complex to have been the result of natural selection. Instead, the "theory" says, they must have been designed by a highly intelligent supernatural force. The studies bestowed with the title "breakthrough of the year" by Science include the sequencing of the chimpanzee genome; recreation of the 1918 flu virus in a laboratory; and a study on European blackcap birds which demonstrated how two different populations can become two separate species. Scientific merit Colin Norman, news editor of Science, said the choice was based solely on the merits of the research, not the battle over intelligent design. "I suppose if [that debate] influenced us at all, it was in the realisation that scientists tend to take for granted that evolution underpins modern biology," he told the BBC News website. "The arguments about intelligent design just made us a little bit more aware of it." The DNA sequenced came from a chimp called Clint Mr Norman said he hoped the choice would send a message to scientists and the public: "Evolution is not just something that scientists study as an esoteric enterprise," he explained. "It has very important implications for public health and for our understanding of who we are." For example, by studying the differences between the human and chimpanzee genome, scientists may be able to pin down the genetic basis for many diseases. And studying the behaviour of the 1918 flu virus could help us combat the next avian influenza pandemic. "The big recent development in evolutionary biology has obviously been the improved resolution in our understanding of genetics," commented Dr Mike Ritchie, of the school of biology at the University of St Andrews, UK. "Where people have found a gene they think is involved in speciation, I can now go and look how it has evolved in 12 different species of fly, because we've got the genomes of all these species available on the web."... The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SpeedRacer 1 #2 December 24, 2005 when some of the arguing was going on before, I was going to point out that evidence for evolution is so ubiquitous that it often pops up even when we're not looking for it. A few years ago I was working in a lab in the field of genetic therapy. We were going to use a modified adenovirus to deliver the gene for human clotting factor IX, as a cure for hemophilia. We have these kits for detecting the serum concentrations of human factor IX called ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbant Assay) kits. They use antibodies to specifically recognize human factor IX. So when we injected our adenovirus into mice, we could easily detect our human factor IX, even though mouse clotting factors work the same way (they have clotting factor IX and all the others just like us) However, when we injected the virus into monkeys, we could not use those kits. The reason? The monkey clotting factor IX so closely resembles the human factor IX that the antibodies in the ELISA kit were cross-reacting with it. So we couldn't tell how much of the Factor IX was the monkey's and how much was coming from our implanted human gene. We had to develop a modified Factor nine gene with a synthetic epitope tagged on the end of it. We used and antibody against that epitope. Speed Racer -------------------------------------------------- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
