[Fwd: How to change the size of an eye spot. Media comment on thepaper in NATURE Jan 17, 2002]

[mbpi at juno.com]

Yeah, without natural selection working for or against it, it proves
NOTHING....

As if this kind of stuff doesn't occur everyday without "tweaking"...  
YAWN...

M.B. Prondzinski

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002 08:47:09 -0500 Michael Gochfeld
<gochfeld at EOHSI.RUTGERS.EDU> writes:
> 
> 
> Neal Smith forwarded to me this item which appeared in a recent 
> issue of NATURE. I think it will be of interest to the group, 
> particularly considering the recent discussions of Polygonia.   MIKE 
> GOCHFELD
> 
> > Check out Nijhout's comment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> >                               Spotting Keys to Evolution
> >
> >
> > Evolution takes tiny steps, but over time those steps add up to 
> create new species. Although researchers usually have trouble 
> tracking these miniscule increments, a team has succeeded in 
> explaining one of them--how a spot on a butterfly's wing changes in 
> size. All it takes are a few tweaks in the gene sequence that helps 
> guide the development of the eyespot.
> >
> > Spotting evolution. Small genetic variations account for the size 
> of the butterfly's eyespot.
> >
> > Patricia Beldade, a developmental evolutionary biologist at the 
> University of Leiden, the Netherlands, and her colleagues chose to 
> study the tropical butterfly Bicyclus anynana because others had 
> already determined the genetic pathways that form its eyespot. But 
> no one had pinned down the source of small variations in these wing 
> patterns, which are important to the insect's survival. These 
> researchers focused on a gene called Distal-less, which helps set up 
> the center of the eyespot.
> >
> > First they bred the butterflies for nine generations to develop 
> one strain with large spots and another with small spots. Because 
> each butterfly carries two of the same copy of Distal-less, the 
> researchers could breed butterflies with all combinations of the 
> genes. When they examined the final strains, the group found that 
> just a few differences in the sequence of "letters" or bases of the 
> Distal-less gene caused spots to grow or shrink. The butterflies 
> with large spots had far more Distal-less activity than the one with 
> small spots, Beldade reports in the 17 January issue of Nature.
> >
> > The work is significant on two counts, says Fred Nijhout, a 
> developmental evolutionary biologist at Duke University in Durham, 
> North Carolina. For one, "this is probably the first experimental 
> study of the process of evolution, that is, of small genetic 
> variation," he says. Furthermore, finding that sequence variation in 
> genes--and not in genetic regulators of those genes as many have 
> thought--affects key traits suggests new avenues for research.
> >
> > --ELIZABETH PENNISI
> >
> > I THINK THAT OLD FRED HERE IS PERHAPS EXERAGERATING A BIT. I SENSE 
> THAT HE IS PRO DUTCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> >
> >   
>
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> >                    Name: bicyclus.jpg
> >    bicyclus.jpg    Type: JPEG Image (image/jpeg)
> >                Encoding: base64
> 
> 
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