How baleen whales lost a gene and their teeth

Reconstruction of Aeitocetus - a species of whal that lived 25 million years ago had both teeth and baleen.

When a blue whale opens its mouth, tonnes of water surge in. The whale then forces the water back out with its tongue, in such a way that it flows through the baleen combs in the front of its mouth. These baleen plates can filter up to half a million calories worth of plankton, krill [...]

The MolBio Carnival #8

MolBioCarnival

Welcome to the eight issue of the MolBio Carnival! Some great blog posts on molecular and cellular biology have been submitted to this edition. So let’s not waste any time and get this carnival started, because there’s much to read and learn. Molecular biologists study life at its tiniest scale. Their world is both fascinating [...]

New family tree of worms has roots in the 19th century

Tomompteris, a free-living worm belonging to the Errantia. When they are disturbed, they release glowing particles from their parapodia.

Nineteenth century biologists had a point when they divided the ringed worms into free-living hunters and sessile filter feeders. Their classification was dismissed in the 1970s, but a closer look at the genes of many different worms now shows that they were closer to the truth than their later colleagues. The classification of worms got [...]

Far side of the chloroplast

CAPTION

In the arid shrublands of the Australian outback, an orchid grows. Hundreds of small flowers are blooming within its lilac leaves. It is unlikely you have ever seen this rare and endangered orchid. In the thirty years after its discovery in 1928, the orchid was seen just six times. Even if you had the luck [...]

Where does milk come from?

Milk: where does it come from?

Milk comes from cows. Most of us know that. More urban readers are forgiven for thinking milk comes from supermarkets. But the the question where milk comes from has the potential to reach beyond dairy farms and breakfast tables. It could be about the origins of milk itself, millions of years ago. “Where does milk [...]

We Are Nobody: Contingency and Convergence in Evolution

A butterfly emerges from its cocoon. No butterfly can change this outcome.

It is the year 2092. Nemo Nobody is the last mortal on our planet. At 117 years old, the brittle Nemo is almost at the end of his life. Everyone around him will live forever, whereas he will be the last one to die. Nemo spends his last days in a hospital where he features in [...]