Isn’t pleiotropy handy?

Look at the interesting snake found in China — it’s got a leg.

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How can this happen? Genes are pleiotropic — they tend to have lots of different functions. The genes involved in making a limb are also expressed in other places; for instance, the Hox genes that specify identity along the length of the body are also reused in specifying identity along the length of the limb. What that means is that when the snake evolved limblessness, it didn’t do so by simply throwing away a collection of leg genes — it couldn’t, not without also destroying genes that functioned in generating its body plan. Instead, it evolved genes or modified the regulation of genes to actively suppress limb development…but the genes to build a limb are still in the genome, and still functional, and still actively working in other ways.

What most likely happened here is that some environmental agent suppressed the suppressor, allowing the old developmental program for a limb to be re-expressed. The retention of such programs is, of course, evidence that this animal evolved from limbed ancestors.

It would be interesting to know what triggered this change. It’s not likely to be genetic (the asymmetry suggests that), but is probably a consequence of some pollutants that disrupt development. It’s not a good sign, anyway.

Some good suggestions from the comments: it may not even be a teratogenic deformity. It could just be a poor lizard that punched a claw through the abdominal wall as it was being digested, and the snake was briefly trundling about in pain from the injury.

We need to do a dissection!

Just in case you’re looking

It turns out that there are a few simple rules to follow when submitting your computer dating form.

Around 42 per cent of messages which included the word “atheist” achieved replies, significantly higher than the average response rate of 32 per cent.

References to “Christian”, “Jewish” and “Muslim” boosted a message’s success rate only marginally, while mentioning “god” in a first approach actually discouraged people from replying.

So just maybe, being godless will increase your fitness in this next generation. Although, given the growing reputation of Christianity, it might just be a matter of distancing yourself from labels that are associated with obsessive kookiness.

What kind of laws do you have over there in Australia?

I’m very disappointed in Australia. Here I thought it was the kind of place where individuality was valued, and there was some good old rugged common sense to the people. But then I read this ghastly story.

In short, Tegan Leach gets pregnant at the age of 18, she and her boyfriend sensibly realize they are too young to be having children, and she obtains some RU486 to induce an abortion. That’s smart and practical, although it would have been better if she’d gotten the assistance of a health care professional to monitor the situation.

Apparently, that wasn’t an option. Doctors refuse to perform abortions of any kind in Queensland, and the laws are hopelessly muddled. The courts are freaking out, and the citizens are insane. These kids had their house firebombed, and their car attacked. Now she’s being prosecuted, and faces seven years in prison.

Maybe she’ll feel mature enough to bear children when she gets out. It’s an interesting social strategy: perhaps you could cage all the girls and women until they are of an age to get pregnant, and then you could release them briefly for breeding? Then, of course, they’d be returned to a larger cage with a crib and a changing table.

Shame on the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History

The Discovery Institute is up to their usual shenanigans — they’re pushing another propaganda movie (say, whatever happened to their research program?), Darwin’s Dilemma. It’s complete nonsense.

This documentary will examine what many consider to be the most powerful refutation of Darwinian evolution–the Cambrian fossil record. Charles Darwin realized that the fossil evidence did not support his theory of gradual, step-by-step evolutionary development. He hoped that future generations of scientists would make the discoveries necessary to validate his ideas. Today, after more than 150 years of exploration fossil evidence of slow, incremental biological change has yet to be excavated. Instead, we find a picture of the rapid appearance of fully developed, complex organisms during the outset of the Cambrian geological era. Organisms that embody almost all of the major animal body plans that exist today. This remarkable explosion of life is best explained by the existence of a transcendent intelligence.

Wait, what? They’re planning to overstate the rapidity of the Cambrian, ignore the vast amounts of morphological change that has occurred in the half a billion years since, and do the usual stunt of waving away scientific explanations so they can claim creationism wins by default. An utterly worthless bit of hokum.

The real shame, though, is that they’ve landed a respectable venue for the premiere: The Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Oklahoma. Well, it was respectable. This will put a little spot of schmutz on their glossy reputation, I fear. And they’re planning to turn it into a real kookfest, with both Jonathan Wells (whose book, Icons of Evolution, revealed that he was an ignorant maroon on the subject of the Cambrian) and Stephen Meyer, the philosopher-creationist with his own book on molecular biology (hah!) to peddle, there to lecture at the opening. I guess any clown can rent the integrity of the U of Oklahoma for a day.

So, where are the University of Oklahoma biology professors? Where is the staff of the museum? Where are the rational people of the state of Oklahoma? They should all be rising up in disgust to mock this ridiculous affair. At least they’ve got ERV to stick up for them.

I wonder if the Oklahoma legislature will try to censure the university for allowing religion on campus, as they did against Richard Dawkins?

In the department of NO-FRICKIN’-BIG-SURPRISE, the movie has two big name scientists in it, Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine…and their interviews were obtained under false pretenses. Of course. I wonder if there isn’t some universal law behind this, that every creationist movie is obligated to lie to some scientist somewhere to get their words on tape?

Crazy talk from ministers

We’ve got a fine gang of nuts coming up through the religious ranks right now. There are some real lunatics associated with Sarah Palin: she’s linked to her home-town priests, Ed Kalnin and Thomas Muthee, who are linked to Morningstar Ministries and Rick Joyner. These cranks have a plan.

Muthee is an international celebrity for his role in a series of documentary videos, seen by millions worldwide, that claim Christians can reduce crime, murder, traffic accidents, addiction, and environmental degradation by driving out, from cities and towns, demon spirits and accused witches.

I am most amused by the clip at that link in which Joyner complains about the unfair treatment Palin received from the press, because they jumped on every crazy little thing she said. The press largely missed her religious beliefs, possibly because they’re so far out there it’s hard to believe a candidate for high office believes in any of that nonsense. She’s a “third wave” Christian.

In an interview for a September 12, 2008 Religion News Service story Rick Joyner stated, “We are probably described as Third Wave. We have had a lot of influence from movements that I think are identified as Third Wave.” The Third Wave is a newly emergent tendency in Christianity, little more than two decades old, which now encompasses by some estimates five percent of the Earth’s population and has been promoted from Ted Haggard’s former Colorado Springs mega-church.

Third Wave doctrine teaches that Christians must reclaim the Earth from demons spirits which possess cities, towns, geographic territories, people, ethnic groups, and even family lines. The cleansing of those demons, and unbelievers, from Earth will usher in a Christian utopian age.

And then there’s Pastor Steven Anderson, the loon who has been praying for Obama’s death. There is a short compendium of some of the most hateful, looney things Anderson has said, and it’s not pretty. Homophobia and petty-minded vindictiveness are apparently not obstacles to claiming spiritual authority…they seem to be more like preliminary qualifications.

Let’s keep all of these nasty, crazy people out of political power, OK? Please?

How to save the California Condor

We just have to make the practice of sky burial popular! Maybe this photo set of a Tibetan funeral will help. (WARNING! Those photos show a large flock of vultures stripping a human body of flesh, with the assistance of some helpful Tibetans who break up the larger bones with hatchets. Don’t click on the link if you are at all squeamish.)

Boy, those are some happy vultures. I think I’d like to bring a little joy into the life a few carrion-feeders after I die, too.

Ooops, another warning: I’d looked at it with an adblocker, so I hadn’t noticed the very in-your-face porn ads on the page, so my apologies. I wouldn’t have thought it worth worrying over if it were just pictures of naked people, but ads that treat women like pieces of meat are far more revolting than corpses getting eaten by big birds.