Recent content by Peez

I will just point out that I have forgotten more about genetics, and the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, than you have ever know. Have a nice day.

Please stop. The difference between "identical" and "almost identical" is not pedantic at all (particularly in this context: "identical twins aren't identical"... "Identical twins ARE rather ... identical!"). Why did you not think that bilby meant "almost identical"? Would you agree that all...

I have no doubt that bilby understands the role of DNA in directing the production of RNA. It would add that, as far as we can determine, epigenetic effects are limited and are themselves influenced by DNA. That said, bilby is correct that so-called identical twins are not actually identical...

There is a great deal to sift through here. When we see a change in an organism (plant, animal, or any other), we do not typically see “a new body part”. Whether or not we see a new “trait” is going to depend on how that term is defined. Quantifying “information” can be quite technical, and...

Nice commentary. So, the original article is an example of pseudoreplication. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoreplication?msclkid=667efbd5cffe11eca821ea4344c41b34>.

I did not think that you were challenging the hypothesis that eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes (no need to yell). I was merely addressing the fact that you were exaggerating the relevant differences.

We should certainly avoid assuming that every trait we look at is 'adaptive' and the product of selection. Virtually all traits probably have had drift as a contributor, but I would tend to side with Dawkins here.

Spermatozoa are functional eukaryotic cells, albeit highly specialized. However, that is not what I was thinking of. Thiomargarita namibiensis is a roughly spherical bacterial cell that can be up to 300 microns in diameter. Ostreococcus is a roughly spherical eukaryotic organism about 0.8...

Hi Swammerdami, For the record, I did not get the impression that you are a creationist (though I did draw a parallel between one of your comments and a common creationist idea), and I agree that the issue is interesting. The simplest known eukaryote in nowhere near as simple as the simplest...

Fair enough, but then you probably should not have introduced these topis with this: :) That may be true, but if we are discussing the evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes then that is less important. In fact the largest living prokaryotes can be 50,000,000 times the volume of the...

Guilty as charged. It really depends on how one wishes to measure the roles. In some ways it is a bit like asking which of the legs of a three-legged stool plays a greater role. Genetic drift can be defined as a change in allele (gene) frequency in a population due to chance (accident)...

I would argue that these issues have little to do with the thread title, and nothing to do with the subject of the OP. I find it not surprising at all that we do not have a nice clear record of fossils showing intermediates in the evolution of eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic cells (the whole...

Indeed people have probably known for thousands of years that individuals tend to share traits with their parents, but the mechanism remained obscure until Mendel made his contribution. It has been a while since I read Darwin, but I seem to remember that his ideas about inheritance were not...

Indeed, I did post "he used the word "mutation" but not with the same definition." Our modern concept of evolution is very similar to his, but more detailed since we know far more about it now. Certainly genetic mutation is not something he could address, though it would have been interesting...

Of course it is semantics, how could "Are not evolution and muattion (sic) synonymous?" be anything but semantics? That said, in the context of biology, as the terms are used by biologists, "mutation" (genetic mutation) is not synonymous with "evolution" (biological evolution). It is possible...