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Friday, August 24, 2012

Most Mutations Come From Dad

3.3:1 paternal to maternal rate ratio, and the rate increases with the father's age, not the mother's.

The link also provides timing estimates as to when humans and chimps diverged, up to 6.6 million years ago.



Chimps have lower rates of cancer than humans and this may be due to differences  in apoptosis (programmed cell death, ie, we want damaged cells to die rather than accumulate mutations), methylation (the molecule CH4 regulates gene expression), or it could be the gene sequences themselves.

It's absurd to hear some people claim that we've "evolved" not to evolve anymore (usually a biology-denier) or not to get cancer (usually a health physics-denier).

Life persists because it's mutable, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't.

(For more info see "Radiation, Evolution, Cancer, & Aging" on upper right of this web page.)

Now "adaptive radiation", that's something else entirely:






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