Mutation and evolution

Tag: adaptation

  • Mutation-biased adaptation reaches the mainstream

    The most recent issue of PNAS includes a report by Galen, et al linking enhanced mutation at a CpG site to altitude adaptation in Andean house wrens (Troglodytes aedon), based on clear biogeographic and biochemical evidence of adaptation.  I’ve been waiting for this, both in the narrow sense that I’ve been waiting for this particular study…

  • Understanding the Mutational Landscape Model

    This post started out as a wonky rant about why a particular high-profile study of laboratory adaptation was mis-framed as though it were a validation of the mutational landscape model of Orr and Gillespie (see Orr, 2003), when in fact the specific innovations of that theory were either rejected, or not tested critically.…

  • When “Darwinian adaptation” is neither

    Getting stuff right Early in the evolution of the Sequence Ontology, it was noted (by gadflies like myself) that SO asserts the relationship of mRNA to gene to be the “part of” relationship.  This is obviously wrong.  An RNA molecule is not part of a DNA molecule.   Saying that mRNA is part of a gene is like…