Genetics

1
Genetics Evolution

• Chapter 19-25

2
Evolution

• Creationism is a religion
• Cannot be disproven via testable experiments
• Intelligent Design (a bridge? Not really)
• Cannot be disproven with experiments either
• Evolution
• Changes regularly to maintain agreement with
  experiments
• Makes predictions about future and past that may
  be tested and thus disproven

3
Darwin Finches

• Galapagos islands
• Usually 2-3 species of finch per island
• Each species very well adapted to eat specific
  seeds (depening on shape and size of beak)
• Climate changes produce hybrid breeding sometimes
  and changes in species populations
• 13 species that are distinct but from an
  evolutionary point of view very similar

4
Micro versus Macroevolution

• Micro used to describe shifts in genotypes within
  a population
• Macro implies new species
• Finch work (and others) in Galapagos indicates
  there is little or no difference between these
  two.

5
Natural Selection

• Survival of the Fittest?
• Success at adaptation and filling ecological
  niches
• Pepper moth of Britain during industrial
  revolution

6
Human Evolution
7
Evidence of Evolution?

• Molecules of Life (all basically the same)
• Cells (ubiquitous to all living organisms)
• Fossils
• Living fossils and modern DNA
• Extremophile bacteria
• Mitochondrial DNA

8
Fact of Evolution versus Theory

• Fact We see organisms that have changed and
  continue to change in time
• Theory How does that change happen?
• Chemical Evolution
• Protein World
• RNA World
• DNA World