Author Archives: hageyt

Culture, Sociality, & Evolution

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Alex Lalejini Culture and Chimpanzees Our species is incredibly social, and one of the major products of our sociality is culture. People typically imagine culture to be exclusive to humans. The idea … Continue reading

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Genetic Drift

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Ali Tehrani Darwinian evolution suggests that the pattern of changes in populations is driven by natural selection, i.e. those individuals that are more fit survive and reproduce. Does that mean populations of … Continue reading

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Evolution of Reliable Signals

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Thassyo Pinto The ownership of goods such as luxury cars, expensive boats and conspicuous consumption, and showing it off to others, transmits a signal informing that owner is capable of bearing expenses. … Continue reading

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Artificial selection and correlated traits

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Tyler Derr One of the basic mechanisms of evolutionary change is natural selection. It was in Charles Darwin’s famous book, On the Origin of Species, where he defined natural selection to be … Continue reading

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It’s a (Selective) Sweep for the Good Genes!

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Douglas Kirkpatrick In baseball, ice hockey, and basketball, when a team wins all of the games in a playoff series, they are said to have swept the other team out of the … Continue reading

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Pseudogenes

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Tyler Derr I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that our DNA is the “blueprint” of who we are. Well, our genes are the sequences in our DNA that actually encode instructions for … Continue reading

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Selfish Genes and the Resulting Gene Conflict

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Alex Lalejini The above comic strip might lead one to believe that the phrase ‘selfish genes’ describes genes that make individuals act selfishly; however, this is not at all what is meant by … Continue reading

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Evolution 101 – Mutations: From the X-Men to the X-Chromosome

This Evolution 101 post is by MSU grad student Douglas Kirkpatrick Everyone knows what mutation is, right? It’s that magical scientific hand-wave that gives the X-Men their powers. Almost certainly the result of interaction with gamma radiation or toxic substances, mutation … Continue reading

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4th Annual Big Data in Biology Symposium at the University of Texas in Austin

This post is by University of Texas at Austin grad student Rayna Harris On Wednesday, May 11, 2016 The Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics hosted the 4th Annual Big Data in Biology Symposium at the University of Texas in Austin. … Continue reading

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Evolving antimutator microbial machines

This post is by University of Texas at Austin grad student Dacia Leon (Twitter: @leondacia) Fluorescence microplate readers are really exciting. These instruments are a staple in any synthetic biology lab given that they allow for high-throughput quantification of microbial growth and fluorescence … Continue reading

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