evolution

“So, there were these two Irish biologists…”

Larry Moran had a chance to meet Michael Lynch at the recent 18th Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in Lyons, France.

He gave a talk on Evolution of Mutation Rates, a topic many of us treat with a large degree of skepticism—until we’re confronted by Michael Lynch. He makes a convincing case for variable rates of mutation in different species and he challenged us (me) to defend the idea that there was a linkage between DNA replication rates and mutation rates. That’s a linkage I’ve always assumed would constrain mutation rates to a narrow range. Now I’m not so sure.

Lynch’s paper is here.

2 thoughts on ““So, there were these two Irish biologists…”

  1. Actually, I find the new 'header' feature in Blogger kind of annoying, because it forces me to think of a 'title' in lieu of my opening line, so that my lead-in doesn't become redundant in the body of the post. So I end up tossing off something like this just to fill the space. I wish Blogger would automatically use your post's first line as the header and be done with it. But this is how they index everything. (sigh)

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