Word: geneses
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Paleontologists can track some of life's transformations in fossils - observing how fins gradually evolved into feet, for example. But fins and feet and other complex structures are also encoded in DNA, and until the 1980s, biologists had almost no knowledge of the genes that built them. Over the past...
These networks are so intricate that they probably put some limits on evolution's creative potential. Once a lineage of animals evolves networks for arms and legs, it's not easy for evolution to rewire the networks to produce, say, wheels. For one thing, many networks share some of the...
Nevertheless, new traits have evolved. Once there were no brains, and now there are billions. Once you could search the entire world and never find a leaf. Now the world is green. Biologists are discovering some of the genetic secrets for evolving new traits. One is to recycle old genes...
Growing hair, for example, is a trait that evolved only in mammals. One of the key proteins in our hair is known as alpha-keratin. Not long ago, some Austrian and Italian researchers decided to search for alpha-keratin genes in animals that lack hair. They found those genes in...
But there's more to the history of life than the branching of a tree. Every now and then, DNA moves between species. Viruses ferry genes from one host to another. Bacteria swap genes inside our bodies, evolving resistance to antibiotics in our own gut. Some 2 billion years ago...