By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; A01
Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.
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BrooklynDodger Comments: The Dodger's first bounce on this paragraph was "What other kinds of mutation are there besides genetic mutations?" The, the pedant in the Dodger thought that WaPo might have been trying to distinguish a germline mutation from a somatic mutation. The Dodger also wondered whether there's gene silencing which has the same effect.
The investigators noted the mutation in non-striped Zebrafish, and a similar "tiny" [single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP?] in people. Evidence for common descent going back before the radiation of fishes from the lines which became people.
ID a, nd creationism are making their big splash just at the time that the underlying mechanisms for evolution by natural selection are strenthening.
The Dodger further notes that DNA, or the alternative intitial replicator, can't be the product of the Intelligent Designer setting a clockwork of life on earth into motion. There can only be one big bang, supernatural in the sense of no ability to have natural knowledge, starting the universe into motion. There's no role for a the Designer coming back for a second biological big bang.
[PS: The eye has evolved, in different forms, dozens of times. Perhaps the ballot official illustrated above is another.]
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