Creationism in Crisis - How Humans Evolved to Live in Cold Climates

Creationism in Crisis

How Humans Evolved to Live in Cold Climates

Most humans haven't evolved to cope with the cold, yet we dominate northern climates – here's why

Turku, Finland in Winter

Jarmo Piironem/Eyem/Getty Images

With the exception of only a few, relatively minor, changes to our genome, such as loss of skin pigmentation and changes to hair and eye colour, and the ingression of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes, non-African humans differ little from the first Homo sapiens to venture out of Africa, where they had evolved as a tropical species. Today, humans are the only Great Ape to live outside of the tropics.

And yet we have managed to live in northern climates with shorter days in winter and sub-zero temperatures in which the earliest members of our species would probably not survive a night without special measures.

With our physical and physiological makeup differing so little from our African forebears, what has enabled us to survive in these hostile conditions to which we were so mal adapted? The answer is that an additional layer of evolution is operating alongside genetic evolution - memetic, or cultural, evolution - so-called gene-meme co-evolution.

Memetic evolution has taken us from the bands of hunter-gatherers huddled round a campfire and sheltering in caves and rock overhangs, to a modern urbanised, hi-tec species living in centrally heated buildings or dressing in warm clothing and entirely dependent on science and technology for our survival. Put us naked out in the open on a cold winter night and few of us would survive, let alone thrive, and survival without cloths and shelter would be impossible on the arctic tundra even in summer.

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation, Laura Buck, Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Kyoko Yamaguchi, Senior Lecturer in Human Genetics, both of Liverpool John Moores University, explain how we and our cousin species, the Neanderthals adapted to the very non-African conditions they found themselves in.

The article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency; the original can be read here.

Most humans haven’t evolved to cope with the cold, yet we dominate northern climates – here’s why

Published: January 16, 2023 6.05am GMT

Humans have used technology to adapt to the cold.

Credit: Yvette Cardozo / Alamy Stock Photo

Laura Buck, Liverpool John Moores University and Kyoko Yamaguchi, Liverpool John Moores University

Humans are a tropical species. We have lived in warm climates for most of our evolutionary history, which might explain why so many of us spend winter huddled under a blanket, clutching a hot water bottle and dreaming of summer.

Indeed all living apes are found in the tropics. The oldest known fossils from the human lineage (hominins) come from central and eastern Africa. The hominins who dispersed northwards into higher latitudes had to deal with, for the first time, freezing temperatures, shorter days that limited foraging time, snow that made hunting more difficult and icy wind chill that exacerbated heat loss from their bodies.

Given our limited adaptation to the cold, why is it that our species has come to dominate not only our warm ancestral lands but every part of the globe? The answer lies in our ability to developed intricate cultural solutions to the challenges of life.

Many humans dread the cold of winter.

Credit: Mariia Boiko/Shutterstock

The earliest signs of hominins living in northern Europe are from Happisburgh in Norfolk, eastern England, where 900,000-year-old footprints and stone tools have been found. At that time, Happisburgh was dominated by coniferous forest with cold winters, similar to southern Scandinavia today. There is little evidence the Happisburgh hominins stayed at the site for long, which suggests they didn’t have time to adapt physically.

It’s still a bit of a mystery how these hominins survived the tough conditions that were so different from their ancestral African homelands. There are no caves in the region, nor evidence of shelters. Artefacts from Happisburgh are simple, suggesting no complex technology.

Evidence for deliberate campfires at this time is contentious. Tools for tailoring fitted, weather-proof clothes don’t appear in western Europe until almost 850,000 years later. Many animals migrate to avoid seasonal cold, but the Happisburgh hominins would have had to travel about 800km south to make a meaningful difference.

It’s hard to imagine hominins surviving those ancient Norfolk winters without fire or warm clothing. Yet the fact the hominins were so far north means they must have found a way to survive the cold, so who knows what archaeologists will find in the future.

The Boxgrove hunters

Sites from more recent settlements, such as Boxgrove in West Sussex, southern England, offer more clues about how ancient hominins survived northern climates. The Boxgrove site dates to nearly 500,000 years ago, when the climate deteriorated towards one of the coldest periods in human history.

There is good evidence these hominins hunted animals, from cut marks on bones, to a horse shoulder blade probably pierced by a wooden spear. These finds fit with studies of people who live as foragers today which show people in colder regions depend on animal prey more than their warm climate counterparts. Meat is rich in the calories and fats needed to weather the cold.

A fossilised hominin shin bone from Boxgrove is robust compared to living humans, suggesting it belonged to a tall, stocky hominin. Larger bodies with relatively short limbs reduce heat loss by minimising surface area.

The best silhouette for avoiding heat loss is a sphere, so animals and humans in cold climates get as close to that shape as possible. There is also clearer evidence for campfires by this period.

Cold climate specialists

The Neanderthals, who lived in Eurasia about 400,000-40,000 years ago, inhabited glacial climates . Compared to their predecessors in Africa, and to us, they had short, strong limbs, and wide, muscular bodies suited to producing and retaining heat.

Yet the Neanderthal protruding face and beaky nose are the opposite of what we might expect to be adaptive in an ice age. Like Japanese macaques living in cold areas and lab rats raised in cold conditions, living humans from cold climates tend to have relatively high, narrow noses and broad, flat cheekbones.

Computer modelling of ancient skeletons suggests Neanderthal noses were more efficient than those of earlier, warm-adapted species at conserving heat and moisture. It seems the internal structure is as important as overall nose size.

Musk ox are well adapted for cold weather.

Credit: Fitawoman/Shutterstock

Even with their cold-adapted physique, Neanderthals were still hostage to their tropical ancestry. For example, they lacked the thick fur of other mammals in glacial Europe, such as woolly rhinos and musk oxen. Instead, Neanderthals developed complex culture to cope.

There is archaeological evidence they made clothes and shelters from animal skins. Evidence of cooking and use of fire to make birch pitch glue for the manufacture of tools show sophisticated Neanderthal control of fire.

More controversially, some archaeologists say early Neanderthal bones from the 400,000-year-old site of Sima de los Huesos in northern Spain show seasonal damage from slowing down their metabolisms to hibernate. The authors argue these bones show cycles of interrupted growth and healing.

Only a few species of primate hibernate such as some lemurs in Madagascar and the African lesser bushbaby, as well as the pygmy slow loris in norther Vietnam.

Lesser bushbabies are one of the few primates that hibernate.

Credit: Rudi Hulshof/Shutterstock

This might give you the idea that humans can hibernate too. But most species that hibernate have small bodies, with some exceptions like bears. Humans may be too big to hibernate.

Jack of all trades

The earliest fossils in the Homo sapiens lineage date from 300,000 years ago, from Morocco. But we didn’t spread out of Africa until about 60,000 years ago, colonising all parts of the globe. This makes us relative newcomers in most habitats we now inhabit. Over the intervening thousands of years, people living in freezing cold places have adapted biologically to their environment but on a small scale.

One well-known example of this adaptation is that in areas with low sunlight, Homo sapiens developed light skin tones, which are better at synthesising vitamin D. The genomes of living Inuit people from Greenland demonstrate physiological adaptation to a fat-rich marine diet, beneficial in the cold.

More direct evidence comes from DNA from a single 4,000-year-old permafrost-preserved hair from Greenland. The hair hints at genetic changes that led to stocky body shape that maximised heat production and retention, like the hominin we only have one shin bone from the Boxgrove site.

Our tropical legacy means we would still be unable to live in cold places without developing ways of coping with the temperatures. Take, for example, the traditional Inuit parka, which provides better insulation than the modern Canadian army winter uniform.

This human ability to adapt behaviourally was crucial to our evolutionary success. Even compared to other primates, humans show less physical climatic adaptation. Behavioural adaptation is quicker and more flexible than biological adaptation. Humans are the ultimate adapters, thriving in nearly every possible ecological niche.
Laura Buck, Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology, Liverpool John Moores University and Kyoko Yamaguchi, Senior Lecturer in Human Genetics, Liverpool John Moores University

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

It's hardly worth mentioning really, but there is no sign at all that the scientists think the Theory of Evolution is not fit for purpose anymore and are about to abandon it in favour of one involving magic and unproven supernatural entities. In fact, the TOE is fundamental even to our understanding of how human cultures developed and why, with a large enough brain and the ability to learn and pass on information, humans are no longer dependent on purely genetic evolution to adapt to change and exploit new opportunities.

What differentiates us from our archaic forebears is not so much our genes but our evolved cultures. The astonishing thing is that some people who live in and benefit from our evolved cultures continue to insist there is no such thing as evolution.

Creationism in Crisis - How Our Immune Systems Have Evolved Over the Last 10,000 Years

Creationism in Crisis

How Our Immune Systems Have Evolved Over the Last 10,000 Years

Using paleogenomics to elucidate 10,000 years of immune system evolution | Institut Pasteur

Explanatory diagram.

© Gaspard Kerner, Institut Pasteur

By analysing the genomes of more than 2,800 individuals who lived in Europe over the last 10,000 years, scientists at the Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, the CNRS and the Collège de France, in collaboration with the Imagine Institute and The Rockefeller University, USA, have traced how the European human immune system has evolved over that period. The increase in frequency of most of the mutations that are advantageous in defending against pathogens were dated to after the Bronze Age, 4,500 years ago.

The scientists also observed that most of the mutations conferring a higher risk of developing inflammatory disorders have become more frequent over the past 10,000 years, suggesting that there is an evolutionary trade-off between greater immunity and greater risk of auto-immune, inflammatory disorders.

This trade-off, is, of course, something that we would not expect to see if the immune system had been improved by an intelligent designer, unless the designer malevolently intended us to suffer from auto-immune conditions.

The evolutionary explanation for this is simply that most of the benefit of a strong immune system manifests in childhood and early adulthood, before the individual has been exposed to environmental pathogens and built up a library of antibodies, and before they have had chance to produce offspring, when selection pressures are thus higher, whereas most of the detriment of auto-immune inflammatory conditions tends to occur in later life, after the individual has reproduced, when the selection pressure is thus much lower.

The research has just been published open access in the journal Cell Genomics.

The research and its significance are explained in a news release from the Institut Pasteur:

Creationism in Crisis - Perto Rican Lizards Evolving

Urban Lizards Share Genomic Markers Not Found in Forest-Dwellers

Puerto Rican crested anole, Anolis cristatellus

Photo credit: Kristin Winchell

Unlike creationism which, because it depends on magic and unproven, unfalsifiable magic supernatural entities, is incapable of making falsifiable predictions, the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (TOE) predicts that, from the same starting point, the same environmental changes will produce the same or very similar phenotypic changes, such as that recently reported for populations of lizards in Puerto Rico.

A paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), reports on a case of parallel evolution between populations of the Puerto Rican crested anole, Anolis cristatellus, where unconnected populations in urban areas have evolved very similar adaptations to an urban environment compared to those living in a forest environment. The paper reports the findings of a team of researchers led by assistant professor of biology, Kristin Winchell, of New York University (NYU), NY, USA.

The NYU news release explains the research and its significance:

Trumpanzee News - What Causes People to Fall For Conspiracy Theories?

Bullying, power and control: why people believe in conspiracy theories and how to respond

A supporter of President Donald Trump, seen wearing a QAnon shirt, is confronted by Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber during the invasion of the U.S. Capitol

Credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

It's probably hard for rationl people to understand why some people fall for such ludicrous conspiracy theories as the QAnon hoax that Donald Trump was fighting the Satanic cannibalistic paedophile ring led by Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama that is secretly running the 'deep state', or that the 2020 election was stolen (apparently without leaving a trace of evidence that would stand up in court). The same fruit loops have also been convinced that the odious liar, crook, serial adulterer, and incompetent narcissist, Trump was send by God to fight Satan and that God had told various self-appointed 'prophets' that Trump would win by a landslide in 2020, so he must have done really.

As it became more and more apparent just how badly Trump lost, being the only presidential candidate in American political history to lose the popular vote twice and that Joe Biden had won it by a record margin, so the conspiracy theories became more and more lurid.

So why do some credulous fools fall for these unlikely theories, usually involving vast secret conspiracies such as the entire scientific community together with all their technical and administrative staff and everyone involved in publishing scientific books, periodicals and papers, or senior military leaders and heads of government of even hostile states, together with their advisors and civil service?

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, Daniel Jolley, Assistant Professor in Social Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK and Anthony, Lantian, Associate Professor in Psychology, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris Lumières, France, explain the psychology and the social causes of this gullibility and readiness to believe the patently absurd. The article, the original of which can be read here, is reformatted for stylistic consistence.

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Getting Better At Killing People

The 'kraken' COVID variant XBB.1.5 is rising quickly in the US – here's what it could mean for the UK

Credit: peterschreiber.media/Shutterstock

As is entirely predictable from the Theory of Evolution, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has caused the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has mutated to produce an even more infectious version - a subvariant of the Omicron variant, given the variant name XBB.1.5 and nicknames 'kraken', under the suggested new protocol of naming significant variants after Greek mythological creatures instead of letters of the Greek alphabet..

This appears to have originated in the USA where a large number of people have resisted getting vaccinated due to the politically-motivated antivaxx campaign by the far right supporters of failed president, Donald Trump,. Trump declared the pandemic to be a hoax and COVID-19 to be a mild illness, early on in the pandemic, when he was out of his depth and panicking over how to cope with the emergency. Having acted out of spite and motivated by racism and a desire to expunge his achievements, Trump had stupidly dismantled the contingencies for just such a pandemic put in place by his hated African-American predecessor, Barak Obama.

Inhibited from doing so by his narcissistic personality disorder, Trump was then unable to admit he got it wrong and his cronies in the Repugnican Party and the evangelical white Christian sects set about campaigning against any measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, including establishing the QAnon cult to promulgate disinformation.

The upshot is a high degree of vaccine scepticism in the USA with a significant majority being vaccinated - a recipe for producing lots of new variants in the unvaccinated population which will then find a niche in the vaccinated population, if they can evade the antibodies.

But is this variant anything to be overly concerned about?

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence, Dr. Grace C Roberts, a research fellow in virology at the University of Leeds, assesses the risks from this new variant for the world in general and the UK in particular. The article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.

The ‘kraken’ COVID variant XBB.1.5 is rising quickly in the US – here’s what it could mean for the UK

Published: January 12, 2023 5.54am GMT

Source: CI Photos/Shutterstock

Grace C Roberts, University of Leeds

The heavily mutated omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was first detected in late 2021.

Due to the many mutations in the spike protein (a protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that allows the virus to attach to our cells) omicron was able to quickly become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant. These mutations allowed it to bind to respiratory cells more tightly than previous variants, rendering it more infectious.

Owing to the dominance of omicron, thanks to these mutations, the past several months have seen the emergence of many subvariants of omicron (scientists have identified more than 650 to date).

The latest variant to worry health professionals and virologists alike is XBB.1.5, nicknamed “kraken” by a group of scientists that has been naming new variants after mythological creatures to make the virus’ evolution more accessible to the public. Here’s what we know about it.

XBB.1.5 is a derivative of the XBB variant of omicron. XBB was never designated as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization because data shows that, while XBB’s mutations enable it to evade our immune systems better than previous omicron subvariants, it doesn’t appear to be causing an increase in infection rates.

In addition to the mutations that XBB.1 has, XBB.1.5 also carries a mutation called S486P in the spike protein region. Preliminary laboratory studies, yet to be peer-reviewed, have shown that, similar to XBB.1, XBB.1.5 is less sensitive to antibodies acquired from vaccination than previous variants XBB and BQ1.1. So it’s very good at evading our immune response.

The same preprint showed that XBB.1.5 was able to bind to ACE2 (the receptor the virus uses to infect our cells) more strongly than these earlier variants. This is the characteristic that made the original omicron variant so infectious and so dominant.

Where is the next COVID variant, pi? A virologist explains why omicron is continuing to dominate

Having first been detected in October 2022 in the US, XBB.1.5 has spread rapidly in the country and is now responsible for around 28% of all new infections. Elsewhere, XBB.1.5 has been detected in at least 23 countries, including the UK. But according to the most recent data, it accounts for only 4% of COVID infections in England.

Given what we’re seeing in the US, it’s likely that XBB.1.5 will become the dominant strain in the UK and Europe in time. But as there are always differences in populations (for example, vaccination rates and social behaviour) it’s hard to predict exactly how things will play out.

XBB.1.5 is rife in the US, but not in the UK and Europe at this stage.

Source: HBRH/Shutterstock

So should we be worried?

Though some of XBB.1.5’s characteristics are concerning, the real-world infection data is not showing an overall increase in infections or deaths globally or in the US (where XBB.1.5. is rife) at present.

It’s too early to tell whether infections from XBB.1.5 are more severe than previous variants, however experts agree that there is no evidence at this stage that it poses any higher risk than variants that have come before it.

Experts also agree that vaccination will continue to protect against serious disease and death from XBB.1.5.

Hybrid immunity: a combination of vaccination and prior infection probably offers the best protection against COVID

With a new variant, there’s always the risk it will affect clinically vulnerable people more severely. Older people and those with conditions that affect their immune systems mount weaker responses to COVID vaccines, so are less protected than the “healthy” population. This means variants that spread more easily or can better evade our immune system may be more likely to infect these people if they’re exposed.

So, while COVID continues to circulate, it’s best to take extra precautions when meeting vulnerable people such as wearing a mask, washing your hands thoroughly, ventilating the space that you are in (or even meeting outdoors), and not meeting them at all if you are ill.

Grace C Roberts, Research Fellow in Virology, University of Leeds

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

It almost goes without saying that for a Creationists to claim intelligent [sic] design at work with these new variants is a tacit admission that their beloved creator god is malevolently designing ways to ensure its virus continues to make people sick and die and to disrupt economies indiscriminately across the world. That Creationists prefer us to have this view of their god rather than accept the science of evolution by mutation and natural selection betrays a hidden political agenda behind Creationism that requites people to distrust science and be misinformed about it.

This is, of course, the stated aim of the Discovery Insitute's failed Wedge Strategy.

Creationism in Crisis - Improving on the "Intelligent Designer's" Designs

Rice Breeding Breakthrough to Feed Billions | UC Davis

A rice field in Bengal, India. Rice is a staple crop for billions of people, but it has proved difficult to bring high-yield hybrid rice strainers to farmers. UC Davis scientists have developed a method to propagate hybrid rice as cloned seeds, reducing costs for growers and allowing them to save improved seed from season to season.

Getty Images

A paper published a couple of weeks ago should have been a major embarrassment to Creationists who believe the Bible tale that a perfect, supremely intelligent designer designed all the plants and animals of the world for mankind.

If that were the case, why have a team of scientists at UC Davis managed to improve the rice plant - a basic staple in the diet of many people.

In fact, of course, the rice plant, like all human crops and just about every domestic animal, has been improved immeasurably in the few tens of thousands of years since humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers to cattle-herders and farmers.

Epicurus
(341-270 BCE)

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

If they had been intelligently designed, especially by an omniscient, omnipotent god, they would be perfectly fit for purpose already with no room for improvement. The fact that they aren't, should suggest to Creationists that there is a problem with their notion, since there was self-evidently no omniscient, omnipotent intelligence involved.

Human domestic animals and cultivated crops have been produced by selective breeding, and now genetic engineering, from the wild types that evolved without a plan and fitted only for maximising the number in the next generation. Nothing, and no-one bred wild rice, wild cattle, wild corn or wild sheep for human consumption or ease of harvest and storage. We did that from whatever starting point the natural processes of evolution had provided.

To anyone who understand it, it presents what amounts to the Epicurus Paradox all over again. The research and its significance is explained in an article by Andy Fell in UC Davis News:

Creationism in Crisis - Common Origins of Modern and Neanderthal Humans

Human and Neanderthal brains have a surprising 'youthful' quality in common, new research finds.

A picture taken on September 6, 2021, shows the reconstruction of the face of the oldest Neanderthal found in the Netherlands, nicknamed Krijn, on display at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.

Bart Maat/ANP/AFP Via Getty Images

The idea of common origins of related species is a fundamental part of the Theory of Evolution, supported by both countless examples of nested hierarchies and the science of cladistics.

Creationists need to resort to unproven claims of common design, to explain the same or closely similar structures and processes being found in related species. In contrast to the scientific explanation of observable evidence of natural processes with no plan, no intent and no magical mysteries, Creationists need to invoke an unproven, unexplained and unfalsifiable magic supernatural entity, claiming this to be the better of the two for no other reason than that their mummy and daddy believed it and it makes them feel special.

Just such an example of the evidence of common origins has recently been published in Nature Ecology & Evolution which shows that both modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had the same rapid evolution of the organisation of the brain that is believed to be responsible for high levels of cognitive ability.

The fact that this is present in two closely related species is highly suggestive that it was present at least in their last common ancestor. It also suggests that Neanderthals had a level of cognitive ability on a par with modern humans.

The research and its significance is the subject of an article in The Conversation by three of the researchers, Professor Stephen Wroe, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia; Dr. Gabriele Sansalone, Institute of Marine Sciences, National Research Council, Messina, Italy, and Professor Pasquale Raia, Department of Earth Sciences, Environment and Resources, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Monte Sant’Angelo, Naples, Italy. That article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.

Human and Neanderthal brains have a surprising ‘youthful’ quality in common, new research finds

Published: January 5, 2023 8.37pm GMT

Neanderthal skull.

Credit: Petr Student/Shutterstock

Stephen Wroe, University of New England; Gabriele Sansalone, Institute of Marine Sciences, and Pasquale Raia, University of Naples Federico II

Many believe our particularly large brain is what makes us human – but is there more to it? The brain’s shape, as well as the shapes of its component parts (lobes) may also be important.

Results of a study we published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution show that the way the different parts of the human brain evolved separates us from our primate relatives. In a sense, our brains never grow up. We share this “Peter Pan syndrome” with only one other primate – the Neanderthals.

Our findings provide insight into what makes us human, but also further narrow any distinction between ourselves and our extinct, heavy-browed cousins.

Tracking the evolution of the brain

Mammalian brains have four distinct regions or lobes, each with particular functions. The frontal lobe is associated with reasoning and abstract thought, the temporal lobe with preserving memory, the occipital lobe with vision, and the parietal lobe helps to integrate sensory inputs.

The four main parts of the brain form the cerebral cortex.

Credit: The Conversation, CC BY-ND

We investigated whether the brain’s lobes evolved independently of each other, or whether evolutionary change in any one lobe appears to be necessarily tied to changes in others – that is, evidence the evolution of the lobes is “integrated”.

In particular, we wanted to know how human brains might differ from other primates in this respect.

One way to address this question is to look at how the different lobes have changed over time among different species, measuring how much shape change in each lobe correlates with shape change in others.

Alternatively, we can measure the degree to which the brain’s lobes are integrated with each other as an animal grows through different stages of its life cycle.

Does a shape change in one part of the growing brain correlate with change in other parts? This can be informative because evolutionary steps can often be retraced through an animal’s development. A common example is the brief appearance of gill slits in early human embryos, reflecting the fact we can trace our evolution back to fish.

We used both methods. Our first analysis included 3D brain models of hundreds of living and fossil primates (monkeys and apes, as well as humans and our close fossil relatives). This allowed us to map brain evolution over time.

Our other digital brain data set consisted of living ape species and humans at different growth stages, allowing us to chart integration of the brain’s parts in different species as they mature. Our brain models were based on CT scans of skulls. By digitally filling the brain cavities, you can get a good approximation of the brain’s shape.

A surprising result

The results of our analyses surprised us. Tracking change over deep time across dozens of primate species, we found humans had particularly high levels of brain integration, especially between the parietal and frontal lobes.

But we also found we’re not unique. Integration between these lobes was similarly high in Neanderthals too.

Looking at changes in shape through growth revealed that in apes, such as the chimpanzee, integration between the brain’s lobes is comparable to that of humans until they reach adolescence.

At this point, integration rapidly falls away in the apes, but continues well into adulthood in humans.

Left: a chart shows the degree of integration between the brain’s lobes, with cooler colours indicating higher integration. Right: translucent skulls of a human, Neanderthal, chimp and gorilla, showing the digitally reconstructed brains within.

Credit: Gabriele Sansalone and Marina Melchionna, Author provided

Neanderthals were sophisticated people

So what does this all mean? Our result suggest what distinguishes us from other primates is not just that our brains are bigger. The evolution of the different parts of our brain is more deeply integrated, and, unlike any other living primate, we retain this right through into adult life.

A greater capacity for learning is typically associated with juvenile life stages. We suggest this Peter Pan syndrome played a powerful role in the evolution of human intelligence.

When did humans first start to speak? How language evolved in Africa

There’s another important implication. It’s increasingly clear that Neanderthals, long characterised as brutish dullards, were adaptable, capable and sophisticated people.

Archaeological findings continue to mount support for their development of sophisticated technologies, from the earliest known evidence of string, to the manufacture of tar. Neanderthal cave art shows they indulged in complex symbolic thought.

Us and them

Our results further blur any dividing line between us and them. This said, many remain convinced some innately superior intellectual quality gave us humans a competitive advantage, allowing us to drive our “inferior” cousins to extinction.

There are many reasons why one group of people may dominate, or even eradicate others. Early Western scientists sought to identify cranial features linked to their own “greater intelligence” to explain world domination by Europeans. Of course, we now know skull shape had nothing to do with it.

We humans may ourselves have come perilously close to extinction 70,000 years ago.

If so, it’s not because we weren’t smart. If we had gone extinct, perhaps the descendants of Neanderthals would today be scratching their heads, trying to figure out just how their “superior” brains gave them the edge.

First-ever genetic analysis of a Neanderthal family paints a fascinating picture of a close-knit community

Stephen Wroe, Professor, University of New England; Gabriele Sansalone, PostDoc fellow, Institute of Marine Sciences, and Pasquale Raia, Professor of Paleontology and Paleoecology, University of Naples Federico II

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

In the abstract to their paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution the researchers say:

Abstract

There is controversy around the mechanisms that guided the change in brain shape during the evolution of modern humans. It has long been held that different cortical areas evolved independently from each other to develop their unique functional specializations. However, some recent studies suggest that high integration between different cortical areas could facilitate the emergence of equally extreme, highly specialized brain functions. Here, we analyse the evolution of brain shape in primates using three-dimensional geometric morphometrics of endocasts. We aim to determine, firstly, whether modern humans present unique developmental patterns of covariation between brain cortical areas; and secondly, whether hominins experienced unusually high rates of evolution in brain covariation as compared to other primates. On the basis of analyses including modern humans and other extant great apes at different developmental stages, we first demonstrate that, unlike our closest living relatives, Homo sapiens retain high levels of covariation between cortical areas into adulthood. Among the other great apes, high levels of covariation are only found in immature individuals. Secondly, at the macro-evolutionary level, our analysis of 400 endocasts, representing 148 extant primate species and 6 fossil hominins, shows that strong covariation between different areas of the brain in H. sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis evolved under distinctly higher evolutionary rates than in any other primate, suggesting that natural selection favoured a greatly integrated brain in both species. These results hold when extinct species are excluded and allometric effects are accounted for. Our findings demonstrate that high covariation in the brain may have played a critical role in the evolution of unique cognitive capacities and complex behaviours in both modern humans and Neanderthals.

Sansalone, Gabriele; Profico, Antonio; Wroe, Stephen; Allen, Kari; Ledogar, Justin; Ledogar, Sarah; Mitchell, Dave Rex; Mondanaro, Alessandro; Melchionna, Marina; Castiglione, Silvia; Serio, Carmela; Raia, Pasquale (2023)
Homo sapiens and Neanderthals share high cerebral cortex integration into adulthood
Nature Ecology & Evolution; 7(1), 42-50; DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01933-6

© 2023 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Creationists, of course, are used to the facts not supporting their beliefs and have developed all manner of coping mechanisms, so little bit of evidence such as this are unlikely to win many over to the intellectual rigours of science as a route to the truth of the world we live in. Theirs is a puny little god who can be seriously damaged by a whiff of doubt and so appreciates the self-sacrifice of intellectual dishonesty, just so long as its followers never consider changing their minds or contemplating the possibility of being wrong, for that would put the income stream of the cult leaders at risk.

Creationism in Crisis - A Double Whammy From Salmonella

New role of small RNAs in Salmonella infections uncovered | Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology

Pathogenic Salmonella bacteria.

Image Credit: nobeastsofierce / Shutterstock

A paper published last month in the American Society for Microbiology's Journal of Bacteriology would be a double embarrassment for Creationists if they were capable of understanding its implications.

The authors, a research team led by Cari Vanderpool and Sabrina Abdulla of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) and the Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA, have shown how the virulence of the pathogenic bacteria, Salmonella, is controlled.

The bad news for Creationists is that:

• It shows that if this system was designed by an intelligent entity, that entity intended to make people sick, because that's what it does.
• It involved control of a system known as the type III secretory system, which is related to and very similar to the Type II secretory system that biologists believe was the evolutionary ancestor of the bacterial flagella that Creationist dogma insists was intelligently designed because it couldn't have evolved.

According to News-Medical.net:

Infections with Salmonella species represent a significant public health problem due to their large and varied animal reservoir, presence of human and animal carrier states, and the lack of coordinated programs for control. Although cases of human salmonellosis have been steadily declining since 1995, it remains one of the most important human food-borne diseases. Salmonella has evolved to live in the gastrointestinal tracts of animals. Thus the primary sources of contamination are animals and their feces. In recent years, the significance of foods of vegetable origin as likely vehicles of gastrointestinal infection has been highlighted.

Regrettably, the published paper in the Journal of Bacteriology is behind a paywall. However, the IGB news release explains the work and its significance:

Salmonella are food-borne pathogens that infect millions of people a year. To do so, these bacteria depend on a complex network of genes and gene products that allow them to sense environmental conditions. In a new paper, researchers have investigated the role of small RNAs that help Salmonella express their virulence genes.

The bacteria infect humans by first invading the cells of the intestine using a needle-like structure, called a type 3 secretion system. This structure injects proteins directly into the cells, setting off a cascade of changes that cause inflammation, and ultimately cause diarrhea. The genes that encode this system, and other genes that are needed for invasion, are found on a region of DNA known as the Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 [SPI-1].

SPI-1 needs to be well controlled. If the type 3 secretion system needle apparatus is not made, Salmonella cannot cause an infection, and if too much of the needle apparatus is made, it makes Salmonella sick.

We have known for a long time that there are a lot of environmental factors that feed into the gene regulation in Salmonella. However, we didn’t know how. That’s when researchers started looking at small RNAs

The starting point for my work was the observation that when we deleted the 3’ UTR, the expression of the hilD gene went up 60-fold,” Abdulla said. “We then decided to look for sRNAs that might be interacting with this region.

This result suggests that the entire 3’ UTR is important for regulation. We showed that the sRNAs stabilize the hilD mRNA and protect it from being degraded.

Such long 3’ UTRs have not been well studied. With more genomic research, people are realizing more and more that these longer regions exist and that they are important for regulation.

We found that when the sRNAs are deleted, the bacteria cannot survive in the host. We also showed that the sRNAs play a role in helping SPI-1 invade the host cells.

Sabrina Abdulla, first author
Department of Microbiology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois, USA

SPI-1 is controlled by an extensive regulatory network. First, three transcription factors: HilD, HilC, and RtsA, all control their own and each other’s DNA expression. They also activate another transcription factor, HilA, which activates the rest of the SPI-1 genes. If this isn’t complicated enough, SPI-1 also needs to sense a variety of environmental cues and tune the expression of its genes in order to infect its host.

Small RNAs play a crucial role in determining how genes function in bacterial cells. Typically, these molecules either interact with proteins, or the mRNA, which carries the instructions for making proteins. As a result, sRNAs affect a variety of bacterial functions, including virulence and responses to the environment.

Now that we know that sRNAs play an important role in controlling SPI-1 through their regulatory effects on the hilD 3’ UTR, we want to extend our studies in two directions. We’d like to understand more about how, at a molecular level, the sRNAs influence hilD mRNA levels. We’d also like to better understand how sRNAs participate in regulating expression of other important SPI-1 genes.

Professor Cari Vanderpool (MME/IGOH), Senior author
Professor of microbiology.
Department of Microbiology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, Illinois, USA

In this paper, the researchers looked at the sRNAs that regulate the hilD mRNA, specifically a sequence on the mRNA called the 3’ untranslated region, a part of the mRNA not involved in making the HilD protein. In bacteria, the 3’ UTRs are usually 50-100 nucleotides long. However, the 3’ UTR of the hilD mRNA was 300 nucleotides long.

The researchers determined that although the sRNAs Spot 42 and SdsR can both target the 3’ UTR, they do so in different regions.

Using mice, the researchers also looked at whether Spot 42 and SdsR can affect how Salmonella causes infections. They performed mouse competition assays, where they introduced mutant bacteria that lacked the sRNAs and bacteria that contained the sRNAs, to see which strains survive and cause infection.

Technical details are given in the teams published paper:

ABSTRACT

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is an enteric pathogen associated with foodborne disease. Salmonella invades the intestinal epithelium using a type three secretion system encoded on Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1). SPI-1 genes are tightly regulated by a complex feed-forward loop to ensure proper spatial and temporal expression. Most regulatory input is integrated at HilD, through control of hilD mRNA translation or HilD protein activity. The hilD mRNA possesses a 310-nucleotide 3′ untranslated region (UTR) that influences HilD and SPI-1 expression, and this regulation is dependent on Hfq and RNase E, cofactors known to mediate small RNA (sRNA) activities. Thus, we hypothesized that the hilD mRNA 3′ UTR is a target for sRNAs. Here, we show that two sRNAs, SdsR and Spot 42, regulate SPI-1 by targeting different regions of the hilD mRNA 3′ UTR. Regulatory activities of these sRNAs depended on Hfq and RNase E, in agreement with previous roles found for both at the hilD 3′ UTR. Salmonella mutants lacking SdsR and Spot 42 had decreased virulence in a mouse model of infection. Collectively, this work suggests that these sRNAs targeting the hilD mRNA 3′ UTR increase hilD mRNA levels by interfering with RNase E-dependent mRNA degradation and that this regulatory effect is required for Salmonella invasiveness. Our work provides novel insights into mechanisms of sRNA regulation at bacterial mRNA 3′ UTRs and adds to our knowledge of post-transcriptional regulation of the SPI-1 complex feed-forward loop.

IMPORTANCE Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is a prominent foodborne pathogen, infecting millions of people a year. To express virulence genes at the correct time and place in the host, Salmonella uses a complex regulatory network that senses environmental conditions. Known for their role in allowing quick responses to stress and virulence conditions, we investigated the role of small RNAs in facilitating precise expression of virulence genes. We found that the 3′ untranslated region of the hilD mRNA, encoding a key virulence regulator, is a target for small RNAs and RNase E. The small RNAs stabilize hilD mRNA to allow proper expression of Salmonella virulence genes in the host.

Abdulla, Sabrina Z.; Kim, Kyungsub; Azam, Muhammad S.; Golubeva, Yekaterina A.; Cakar, Fatih; Slauch, James M.; Vanderpool, Carin K.
Small RNAs Activate Salmonella Pathogenicity Island 1 by Modulating mRNA Stability through the hilD mRNA 3′ Untranslated Region
Journal of Bacteriology; e00333-22. DOI: 10.1128/jb.00333-22

© 2022 American Society for Microbiology.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Clearly, a Creationist is obliged to believe that their putative intelligent [sic] designer went to great lengths to come up with this complex system to control the mechanism it designed to make us sick - the type III secretory system. It then appears to have reinvented most of the components of this system to create the bacterial flagellum, if you believe Creationist claims. And of course, to a Creationist, that's a much more sensible explanation than that this system evolved by a natural, mindless, utilitarian process with no plan and no motive, and that the components of that system were then repurposed by evolution to give bacteria a propulsion system.

Malevolent Designer News - Getting Better At Killing Salamanders With 'Jumping Genes'

A fire salamander.

Credit: Jaime Bosch.

Research news - ‘Jumping genes’ help fungus kill salamanders - University of Exeter

Creationist mode:

Embarrassingly for Creationists, when their divine malevolence wanted to improve the ability of one of its pathogens to kill salamanders, it used a method that Creationists deny exists. It increased the amount of genetic information, not by magic like creationists believe genetic information gets created, but by using one of the methods evolutionary biologists know creates new genetic information naturally, without magic or supernatural entities - so-called 'jumping genes'.

'Jumping genes' or transposons, are pieces of DNA that have the ability to copy and paste themselves into new parts of the DNA, often carrying genes with them. In so doing they add new information into the genome and replicate any genes they carry with them. These copies of genes can them mutate without loss of function because the originals still exist, or as in the case of this fungal pathogen, they can augment the activity (and the virulence) of the original gene.

The fungal pathogen is Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) which infects the skin of salamanders, killing them. This is of course an example of beneficial mutations (from Bsal’s point of view), since Bsal produces more copies of itself the more salamanders it can infect.

Creationist mode:

The discovery of these jumping genes and their role in increasing the virulence of Bsal was made by a team of scientists led by the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at Exeter University, Devon, UK. Their findings as published, open access, in Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

The Exeter University news release gives the details:

A fungus that infects salamanders contains multiple copies of the same “jumping genes”, scientists have discovered.

Jumping genes, called transposons, can “copy and paste” themselves and impact the organism.

Most organisms have some repeated parts of their DNA, some of which are jumping genes, but this can be harmful – and mechanisms exist to prevent or limit this.

However, the new study – led by the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter – finds a possible evolutionary advantage of these jumping genes in a fungus called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal).

Not only did they find different versions of these jumping genes repeated multiple times in Bsal’s genome – but the gene in question appears to have duplicated another group of genes that play a role in how severely it affects infected fire salamanders.

Bsal and related fungal species infect amphibians worldwide, and have been responsible for more than 90 extinctions. Bsal infects the skin of salamanders and newts and causes severe wounds.

It emerged in Asia, where many newts and salamanders have some tolerance, but it has spread to Europe and is causing European salamander populations to decline.

Using new sequencing technologies, we found that Bsal has undergone a genome expansion compared to related species – that is to say, it now has a bigger genome with more genes and also more of these ‘jumping gene’ transposons.

If you think of an organism’s genome as a blueprint, transposons are like having many identical pages, and sometimes, during the process of copying and pasting, other parts of the book are also copied.

It appears that this copying and pasting caused by repetitive jumping gene transposons has also amplified some skin-destroying genes. Having more of these skin-destruction genes allow the fungus to destroy the skin of salamanders more quickly, making it more deadly.

Theresa Wacker, first author.
Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.

Most organisms have a few jumping gene transposons. In humans, they typically make up less than 1% of the genome, and we have controlling mechanisms to prevent this from rising.

In Bsal, repeated jumping genes make up about 19% of the genome. Transposon jumping genes can interfere with regular gene function and cause problems for the organism – but for Bsal this seems to be outweighed by the advantages.

This kind of gene repetition is probably more widespread in nature than we currently realise.

If, as appears to be the case, it confers an evolutionary advantage for the pathogen by making it more virulent, it’s not clear why this isn’t much more common.

Dr. Rhys A Farrer, lead author.
Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

The new study found the ability of jumping gene transposons to copy and paste themselves contributed significantly to this expansion. The team are now doing further research.

Senior author Dr Rhys Farrer said repetitive DNA, including jumping genes, is sometimes referred to as “junk” DNA.

The study’s finding shed new light on the evolution of a major amphibian disease, and Dr Farrer called it a “paradigm shift” in terms of identifying repetitive genome content as a driving force behind its pathobiology.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PNAS. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

The team's findings can be read in the journal PNAS:

Significance

Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) and its closest relative B. dendrobatidis (Bd) are fungal pathogens that threaten amphibians globally. Pathogenicity in vertebrates by species of Batrachochytrium is thought to have emerged from nonpathogenic and saprobic relatives over millions of years through gene expansions of secreted proteolytic enzymes families. Using deep nanopore sequencing and comparative genomics, we discover that Batrachochytrium genomes have undergone a repeat-driven expansion characterized by flanking repetitive elements enriched around pathogenicity genes, genes with signatures of positive selection, and genes upregulated during infection. These genomic features are the hallmarks of two-speed genomes that have to date only been described in plant pathogens. These discoveries shed new light on the evolution of fungal pathogens of vertebrates driving global declines and extinctions.

Abstract

The origins and evolution of virulence in amphibian-infecting chytrids Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) are largely unknown. Here, we use deep nanopore sequencing of Bsal and comparative genomics against 21 high-quality genome assemblies that span the fungal Chytridiomycota. We discover that Bsal has the most repeat-rich genome of the Chytridiomycota, comprising 40.9% repetitive elements; this genome has expanded to more than 3× the length of its conspecific Bd, with autonomous and fully functional LTR/Gypsy elements contributing significantly to the expansion. The M36 metalloprotease virulence factors are highly expanded (n = 177) in Bsal, most of which (53%) are flanked by transposable elements, suggesting they have a repeat-associated expansion. We find enrichment upstream of M36 metalloprotease genes of three novel repeat families belonging to the repeat superfamily of LINEs that are implicated with gene copy number variations. Additionally, Bsal has a highly compartmentalized genome architecture, with virulence factors enriched in gene-sparse/repeat-rich compartments, while core conserved genes are enriched in gene-rich/repeat-poor compartments. Genes upregulated during infection are primarily found in the gene-sparse/repeat-rich compartment in both Bd and Bsal. Furthermore, genes with signatures of positive selection in Bd are enriched in repeat-rich regions, suggesting these regions are a cradle for the evolution of chytrid pathogenicity. These are the hallmarks of two-speed genome evolution, and this study provides evidence of two-speed genomes in an animal pathogen, shedding light on the evolution of fungal pathogens of vertebrates driving global declines and extinctions.

Wacker, Theresa; Helmstetter, Nicolas; Wilson, Duncan; Fisher, Matthew C.; Studholme, David J.; Farrer, Rhys A. Two-speed genome evolution drives pathogenicity in fungal pathogens of animals
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (2023); 120(2), e2212633120. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2212633120

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PNAS. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Of special note for Creationists:

• If this is intelligent design, the designer can't be regarded as benevolent, since the purpose of the fungus, and then of the modifications the team found, appears to be to make salamanders suffer and die.
• The mechanism of the mutations is one which biologists already recognise as one of the methods by which information can increase in a genome.
• This is an example of a beneficial (to the fungus) mutation since, by increasing its virulence, it is increasing the number of copies of the duplicated genes in the genome of the next generation compared to the normal compliment of genes.
• The scientists are entirely dependent on the Theory of Evolution to explain why this mutation has increased and spread in the species genome. There is no suggestion in their findings that magic creation is a better explanation.

All in all then, a paper that Creationists will wish had never been published and which they are almost certain never mention inside their cult's echo chambers if they want to remain members.

Trumpanzee News - Trumpanzees CAN be Nicer People

Trumpanzees resorting to violence because they lost the election.

Conspiracy Theorists Are Nicer After Thinking Things Through | Psychology Today

A characteristic of Trumpanzee cultists, is their almost complete dependence on conspiracy theories to sustain their patently absurd belief in Donald Trump as some sort of divinely inspired saviour sent by God to engage with Satanic figures running the 'Deep State'.

These Satanic figures are, of course, because the only important things that happen in the world, happen in America, Democrat politicians, scientists and billionaires such as Bill Gates, led by Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and assorted cannibalistic paedophiles. The conspiracy Trump was fighting gets ever more lurid, the more preposterous it becomes.

The 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy of course involved all the election officials in states where Joe Biden won in 2020, because they helped 'steal' the election from the rightful winner, Donald Trump, and all the judges who refused to overturn the result on the 'spurious' grounds that Trump's advocates could not find any evidence to support their claim, other than Trump's claim that he won really.

Another aspect of this 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy is the belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was fake and a pretext for injecting people with mind-controlling vaccines developed by Bill Gates, or as an excuse to stop people going to church, or that wearing face coverings was an attempt at population control because people can't breathe properly with a face covering and die of asphyxia. Of course, government health officials like Anthony Fauci, America's leading epidemiologist, were part of the conspiracy and faked the statistics such as the case numbers and deaths.

The third aspect of Trumpanzeeism is the belief that demands by black people to be treated the same as white people by the police is a conspiracy by political extremists such as anti-fascists [sic], to deprive white Christians of their rightful position as the middle and upper class of a stratified society. A society in which the poor (and Black) only have themselves to blame, welfare is a scam whereby the white middle class is robbed through taxation to subsidise fecklessness and drug dependence, and health care should be preserved for those who can afford to pay for it, the way God intended, in White Christian America.

And we shouldn’t forget the notion that Mexicans are all drug-dealing criminals and rapists who want to destroy America.

But just holding whackadoodle beliefs is itself harmless. What is harmful is the antisocial behaviour that can come from holding them, such as discouraging people from getting vaccinated against a lethal virus, encouraging them to attend super-spreader events where social distancing and wearing face coverings were seen as a disloyal political statement, and such as trying to overthrow a democratic government in a violent insurrection.

Previous research has shown that holders of conspiracy theories are more likely to indulge in criminal activities and other anti-social behaviour and less likely]y to conform to prosocial norms, often regarding laws and social norms as part of the conspiracy.

But there is some hope that at least the more anti-social consequences of holding conspiracy theories, such as those adhered to by Trumpanzees, according to the results of an interesting study by four researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany, led by Lotte Plummerer, a PhD candidate.

As described in Psychology Today by Craig Harper Ph.D.:

Unintelligent Designer News - An Enzyme Which Protects Us Against Viruses Also Causes Cancers. Is this Malevolence or Incompetence?

Enzyme That Protects Against Viruses Could Fuel Cancer Evolution | Newsroom | Weill Cornell Medicine

A three-dimensional image of a cancer cell's nucleus obtained by Dr. Faltas and his team shows the APOBEC3G protein (green) inside the nucleus (blue).

In a stunning example of unintelligent design, an enzyme that Creationists have to believe was designed by their putative omniscient designer god to protect us from the viruses it designs to make us sick, also causes cancers. Whether this is evidence of malevolence or incompetence is difficult to say, if you believe the Creationist claims. What it can't in all honesty be presented as is evidence of supreme intelligence and omnibenevolence.

Fortunately, people who understand evolutionary biology don't need to concern themselves with those sorts of questions because they know a mindless, utilitarian natural process like evolution is not a sentient entity and therefore has no intent. Arms races such as that between our immune system and viruses is entirely predictable, as is the example of trade-off between protecting against viral infection and causing cancer. The only test of effectiveness is in the number of descendants that survive to reproduce.

The role of the enzyme, called APOBEC3G, which protects human cells against retroviral attack, in promoting cancer was discovered by a team lead by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine who used a preclinical model of bladder cancer to investigate the role of the enzyme in promoting the disease and found that it significantly increased the number of mutations in tumour cells, boosting the genetic diversity of bladder tumours, making it harder to treat and hastening mortality.. They have published their findings in the journal Cancer Research, sadly behind a paywall.

The Weill Cornell Medicine news release gives details:

Creationsm in Crisis - How A New Plant Species Evolved

Ethereal color variant of mysterious plant is actually a new species | Research at Kobe

Figure 1. Morphological comparison of the aboveground parts of M. kirishimense and M. humile:
(a-c) M. kirishimense, (d-e) M. humile, (f). M. humile f. roseum (color variant of M. humile). The arrowheads indicate spreading sepals.

Photographed by Masayuki Sato (a), Katsumi Iwahori (b), Shuichi Kurogi (c), Shin Terui (d), Kazushige Uemori (e), and Kenji Suetsugu (f).

Giving the lie yet again to Creationists' absurd claim that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is being increasingly rejected by mainstream scientists and is about to become the first scientific theory to be replaced by a superstition based on magic and an unproven supernatural entity, Bronze Age Creationism, scientists in Japan have discovered that what was thought to be a colour variant of a parasitic plant, is in fact a new species. They have suggested how this new species could have evolved from the parent species.

The new species is the rosy pink form of the parasitic plant known to science as Monotropastrum humile. These plants as found throughout the woods of East and Southeast Asia and have lost their ability to photosynthesise, depending instead on the hyphae of soil fungi which are themselves in a symbiotic relationship with other plants. These soil fungi connect to the roots of other plants and help breakdown organic molecules in the soil into nutrients the plans can use. In return the plants supply the fungi with the sugars they produce in their leaves. Monotropastrum humile however, is a free loader on this system and not only takes the nutrients but also the sugars, while giving nothing in return.

But it's not this parasitic relationship which is under consideration here, but the newly-discovered status of the rosy pink form, which close examination and 20 years of study have shown to be a different species. The Kobe University scientists who identified it as a new species have named it M. kirishimense, after Kirishima, in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, where it was first found growing.

From the Kobe University news release:

Creationism in Crisis - The Evolution of Complex Life Forms

Shedding light on the origin of complex life forms

Figure 1: Cryo-electron tomography provided insight into the cellular structure of a newly cultured Asgard archaeon illustrated here. Remarkable are the extensive actin cytoskeleton filaments (orange) in the cell bodies and cell protrusions, as well as the unique cell envelope (blue).

© Margot Riggi, The Animation Lab, University of Utah

The problem with Creationism, and the main reason it is rejected by evolutionary biologists and an overwhelming majority of other scientists, is because it requires its believers to not only believe in magic and unproven supernatural entities, but also to believe demonstrably false dogmas. They also believe the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is being increasingly rejected by mainstream scientists in favour of their evidence-free Bronze Age, magical superstition.

For example, one absurd dogma is that it is impossible for complexity to increase by an evolutionary process because this needs an increase in genetic information and the Second Law of Thermodynamics [sic] forbids it. It does nothing of the sort, of course, as anyone who understands the 2LOT and genetics will tell you. The Creationist cults work hard to ensure their dupes understand neither.

A casual and unintentional refutation of these absurdities was provided a few days ago by a team of researchers at Universität Wien and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, who cultivated a special archaeon, a member of the Asgard archaea, and examined it in microscopic details, noting that it contained unique cellular characteristics suggesting that it could be the evolutionary link to more complex forms such as animals and plants.

According to the Vienna University news release: