Each of us carries just over 20,000 genes that encode everything from the keratin in our hair down to the muscle fibers in our toes. It’s no great mystery where our own genes came from: our parents bequeathed them to us. And our parents, in turn, got their genes from their parents.

But where along that genealogical line did each of those 20,000 protein-coding genes get its start?

That question has hung over the science of genetics ever since its dawn a century ago. “It’s a basic question of life: how evolution generates novelty,” said Diethard Tautz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany.

Continue reading “The Continuing Evolution of Genes” →

This is a busy time of year for Richard B. Primack, a biologist at Boston University. He and his colleagues survey the plants growing around Concord, Mass., recording the first day they send up flowers and leaves.

Compared to the last five springs, things are pretty slow right now around Concord, in large part because of the relatively cold winter and chilly March.

But Dr. Primack wouldn’t call this a late spring. “It’s just much later compared to our recent memories of spring,” he said.

Continue reading “Springing Forward, and Its Consequences” →