Dr_666

Completely agree with you.

It seems to me that I'm not the only one missing points

Hey guys! Obesity, as any other trait that you may think of, has a genetic and an environmental component. If you are interested in the genetic component, have a look at the OMIM (On-line Mendelian Inheritance in Man) database: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=OMIM&cmd=search&term=obesity However, I don't know why it seems to me that you have a misunderstanding about the mechanisms of heredity of evolution. Let me clarify this. People may become fat because of an unhealthy diet but... this will never be transmitted to their children, because acquired characteristics are not heritable!!! So obesity due to environmental causes can never be "passed on through generations" or "affect the gene pool" in any way. Dr_666

No, it will not.

Hey, You can think of the genome as a big dictionary made up of many words. Each of these words (the genes!) contains information required for performing a biological function. For instance, many genes are actually instructions on how to build proteins, which are molecules that play many different roles in the cells. What you need to know is that the cells of some organisms (like humans, for example) are given TWO copies of the dictionary. These dictionaries are weird because they might not be exactly identical, and some of the words in each copy might have slightly different definitions. Each of these versions of a gene (or "word") is called an allele. The advantage of having two copies of each gene (two "alleles") is obvious if you consider that the "dictionaries" that you inherit (one from your mother and the other one from your father) have some pages or words damaged or missing. Let me know if you need more information, Dr_666

Why just one god and not many? who told you that? If we admit the existence of gods, I cannot see why they cannot be more numerous. Romans and Greeks had many and were probably better informed than we are, because they are closer in time to the creation, if such an event happened. This is just to make you think scientifically on your question

The problem with Lamarck's theory is that it DOES NOT account for the facts. Acquired characteristics are not inherited. You may have pale skin and have tanning sessions everyday, but that will not influence the skin color of your kids. As you perfectly notice, Darwin was not able to explain the origin of the variation that he appreciated in living beings. However, Darwin succesfully noticed that such variation had to be HERITABLE (so not like your tanning sessions). Unfortunately, the mechanisms of inheritance and mutation were still unknown when Darwin wrote his theory. Today, Genetics provides several mechanisms to generate the above-mentioned heritable variation.Two of these mechanisms are mutation (chemical changes in the genes, for instance) and recombination (new combination of genes from the parents). Hope this helps!

I suggest you to read a book that will give you a different point of view. The book is "The blind watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. You can find it at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393315703/qid=1119855728/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-8476539-5838209?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 If you are interested in this controversy, you will enjoy reading it. Also, it will give you a scientific point of view on the evolution of complexity from scratch. Hope this helps.

The writer neither is a scientist nor represent current scientific views when he says: "Findings from the last two decades in particular openly contradict the basic assumptions of this theory. Many branches of science, such as paleontology, biochemistry, population genetics, comparative anatomy and biophysics, indicate that natural processes and coincidental effects cannot explain life, as the theory of evolution proposes". I recommend you to have a look at a reliable source of information, such as: http://nationalacademies.org/evolution/ Hope this helps

Even Nobel prize winner Francis Crick believes that. You can have a look at his book "Life itself" about the "directed panspermia" hypothesis, according to which life was sent to the Earth in a spacecraft by some advanced extraterrestrial civilization. Amazon link for "Life itself" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671255622/qid=1119854365/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-8476539-5838209?v=glance&s=books Hope this helps Dr_666

Let's assume that the frequency of each nucleotide is about 1/4 (0.25). The probability of getting the GCTGGTGG sequence just by chance would be: (1/4)^8 = 0.25 to the power of 8 = 0,000015 that means 1 every 65536 sequences of eight nucleotides. You find that sequence every 5000, so they happen less often than they would be expected just by chance. Hope this helps.

Although (unfortunately) some people use the term RT-PCR for real-time PCR, the most commonly accepted, old and widespread meaning for RT is reverse transcription (or reverse transcriptase). If you are talking about gene expression, you need a reverse transcription step. This creates molecules of DNA (cDNA or complementary DNA) from mRNA molecules (messenger RNA). The cDNA is subsequently used in a PCR reaction (hence the name RT-PCR). As regards to the other meaning (real-time PCR) is not necessary related to the study of gene expression. It's a technique that allows you to determine the amount of template DNA that is present at the beginning of the PCR. This template can be cDNA (after a reverse transcription step, to quantify expression levels), but can also be viral or bacterial DNA (to assess the progress of an infection), genomic DNA (to assess the number of transgenes in a transgenic plant), etc. Hope this helps.