Regulated cascades pop up all the time in biology–particularly in complex organisms. Whether coagulation, development or differentiation of specific cell types, they all follow the same general pattern.

Some new work, in the field of skeletal muscle differentiation, points to another way beyond the divine to generate a cascade.

Human understanding of life has come in spurts, separated by decades of consolidation and grappling with new data or new ways of thinking about biology. We’re, right now, in midst of another spurt in our understanding of life.

No one really argues about the validity of natural selection. Only the most hardened of young Earth creationists contest that organisms with more adaptive traits will preferentially survive and reproduce. The Intelligent Design crowd tends to wave this off as a trivial truth. Of course, they say, better traits are selected for. They instead claim […]

(Salim Virji) Who doesn’t love the platypus? This is a creature bizarre enough to make marsupials feel better about themselves. The platypus, lactates (mammal!) and lays eggs (reptile!), grows fur (mammal!) and venom (reptile!). This might be the single most interesting creature, from an evolutionary point of view, on the planet. About 315 million years […]

Ready? Prepared to have your mind blown? (cartoon via xkcd) Ideas are tested by experiment. That’s all there is to science. This is the only bar an idea must be taller than to take the ride of science as a legitimate hypothesis. An untestable, unknowable, incomprehensible supernatural force is required for the existence of living […]