The best of Quintessence of Dust

Selections from my blog, Quintessence of Dust. Slightly edited, in PDF format.

4 p.

New tricks for old enzymes: rewiring cell signaling systems

From: StephenMatheson

  • 68
  • 2
  • 07 / 31 / 2011
4 p.

Clonal interference and the speed limit of evolution

Clone wars, or how evolution got a speed limit by Stephen F. Matheson Originally published on Quintessence of Dust, January 2009. The standard simplified narrative of evolutionary adaptat...

From: StephenMatheson

  • 252
  • 2
  • 05 / 26 / 2011
3 p.

Alu elements and blindness

From: StephenMatheson

  • 131
  • 2
  • 05 / 26 / 2011
3 p.

Alu elements: introduction

From: StephenMatheson

  • 150
  • 0
  • 05 / 26 / 2011
3 p.

Which came first, the bird or the smaller genome?

From: StephenMatheson

  • 158
  • 0
  • 05 / 25 / 2011
4 p.

How the bat got its wing

From: StephenMatheson

  • 217
  • 0
  • 05 / 22 / 2011
2 p.

Evolutionary change in Darwin's tomatoes

Blog post from May 2008, which was subsequently anthologized in The Open Laboratory 2008. Finches, bah! What about Darwin's tomatoes? by Stephen F. Matheson Charles Darwin collected all...

From: StephenMatheson

  • 120
  • 0
  • 05 / 22 / 2011
5 p.

Teosinte, Corn, and Evolution

Blog post from October 2007, which was subsequently anthologized in The Open Laboratory 2007. They selected teosinte and got... corn. Excellent! Evolutionary science is so much bigger, ...

From: StephenMatheson

  • 305
  • 0
  • 05 / 21 / 2011
3 p.

A ruthlessly selfish piece of DNA

What a selfish little piece of... by Stephen F. Matheson Originally published on Quintessence of Dust, August 2011 "The Selfish Gene." "Selfish DNA." Oh, how such phrases can get people b...

From: StephenMatheson

  • 57
  • 0
  • 08 / 02 / 2011
4 p.

Evolution by weakening: how mutations work together

From: StephenMatheson

  • 81
  • 1
  • 08 / 08 / 2011