When I go through the molecular biology books, I get the impression merely DNA/protein evolves and everything else remains as such!
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First, DNA is not the person, its the template for making protein which can build a person, but its no more the person than blueprint are a building.. Second, if you are talking biologically, the only characterstics that are passed on to the progeny are those in the DNA-But keep in mind, philosophy, ideas, culture can all evolve, and of course you will teach these to your children, and thus pass them on.  I think, though , that your question was what biological traits are passed on, and those are only carried in the DNA.  Protein, by the way, does not evolve independently-If the DNA mutates, it will produce a slightly different protein (or more or less of a protein, if the mutation was in a promoter and not coding region of DNA).  Proteins do not pass directly from parent to child.
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You are looking at evolution incorrectly. It is not progressive and it has no direction. Your question is ill posed.
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Just a clarification-DNA is composed of nucleic acids, not amino acids.  Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.
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Errr, not really.\n\nYou must also understand that evolution in no way says anything about the origins of life.  That's a whole other subject ;).
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First, kudos to you for being so open minded.\n\nI haven't read the Nat'l Geo article yet ... but I have it, and am anxious to read it.  Say what you will, the photos are breathtaking (but that's nothing new with Nat'l Geo).  And I have read several Dawkins books, but not that one. \n\nBut without hearing your specific counter-arguments, I don't know how to address them, or why you find the evidence to be "not of such high quality."  The evidence is actually *exceedingly* strong ... and most scientists accept it.\n\nI highly recommend two books in the "Beginners" series.  Specifically, "DNA for Beginners" and "Darwin for Beginners".   Don't be fooled by the cartoon format of these books ... they are excellent introductions to the science.\n\nBut if I can try and guess your point ... if the evidence of genetic linkage with *prehistoric* species is not of "high quality", it's because the DNA molecule (the source of all genetic material for all life on this planet) breaks down rather quickly.  Even a few hundred years is enough to start breaking down the DNA in the remains of animals.  And fossils rarely contain any genetic material.  However, this is not always true.  Occasionally, bone tissue can remain in fossils, and some DNA can be extracted (as we have done with Neanderthal, for example).  But overall, recovering genetic material from prehistoric animals is difficult.\n\nHowever, the genetic links can be reconstructed quite well by examining genetic similarities between living descendants of that prehistoric species.  If living species A, B, and C all have specific genes in common (code for the same protein, same location in the chromosomes, almost identical amino-acid structure), then this tells us that their common ancestor X had these genes.  If there is a fouth species D that has some, but not all the genes shared by A, B, and C ... then this indicates that there is a common ancestor Y that is further back that is the ancestor of all four living species.\n\nFuthermore, there is the concept of the 'molecular clock'.  This is the known rate at which transcription errors (basically 'typos') occur in DNA as it gets passed from generation to generation.  So the number of minor 'typos' found in the DNA of A, B, and C gives us a strong indication of how long ago their common ancestor X lived.  (For more info. see source.)\n\nI hope that helps.  It's hard to be more specific without knowing what your specific objections are.
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Boy, am I ever glad I'm done with high school biology where they ask ridiculous, ambiguous fill-in the blank questions like that.  I have a degree in biology and I couldn't give you a solid answer.  It will be a word that you should have been studying in class.\n\nIe.,  \nAdaptation - mutations that give an organism an advantage\nMutation - alterations in genetic makeup\nEvolution - changes in organisms over time due to adaptation\nNatural Selection - conditions which select adaptations\n\nI would go with adaptation, but no guarantees.  The concept here is that as we take antibiotics we kill a lot of bacteria, but not all of them.  The remaining few that survive are the "tougher" ones, at least ones that aren't affected as much by the antibiotics.  These remaining bacteria may continue to grow in numbers.  If they ever succeed in infecting more people, the antibiotics will now do nothing.\n\nP.S...  A lot of people think that bacteria randomly mutate until one of them becomes resistant.  This is only part of the story.  Antibiotics almost always originate from other bacteria, or some other organism trying to fend off bacteria.  These antibiotics are not new, just new to medicine.  Bacteria have been resisting these antibiotics for millions of years.  Maybe not actively, but somewhere in their past it has probably been encountered.  Yet another reason why a one-word answer just doesn't cut it.
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Your evidence is flawed in several places.\n\nOf course the Theory of evolution is not a law but a theory.  Thus the title THEORY of evolution.  Laws have exceptions.\n\nI also fail to see the link between breeding and natural selection.  You CAN get new traits from mutations in the DNA, and if these mutations are advantageous, nature allows them to survive and reproduce, and thus the mutation is passed on to the next generation.\n\nThe reason for the lack of variety in cheetah DNA is due to a extended period of inbreeding that occured during the last ice age.  This means that cheetahs are more closely related to one another than humans are to one another. Thus the ability of cheetahs to recieve skin from one another.\n\nNot one thing in your rant disproves evolution.
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Ow!  My toes!  ;) (kidding)\n\nI think it's ludicrous that people are treating the theory as if there's any real debate among scientists on the matter.  Global Warming is far, far, far more contested than is evolution; yet in the popular press, you'd never know it.\n\nWhat I get sick of is all the crap about "missing links" or whatever.  Quite frankly, I don't give a rats @$$ about the fossil record.  Sure, it was important to Darwin when he formulated the theory, but one can't really expect that the fossil record should be any where near complete, and all the arguments against evolution focus on this field.  I studied molecular biology, and it is in molecular biology that you'll find way, way stronger support for the theory.\n\nWhen I list the sorts of evidence that come from molecular biology (Homologous proteins, the near universality of the genetic code (eg the relation between codons and amino acids), genetic drift in non-essential parts of homologous proetiens, DNA technology that can show relationship, developmental homology (ie ontogeny and it's relationship to phylogeny), etc) I get people acting like I presented no evidence because they couldn't even understand that the list I've given actually is evidence.  It takes a long time to understand the manner in which DNA becomes a protein, and the way that proteins fold, the way they work, and the way their related.  Until you understand that, the "Big Picture" is not clear.  But to those that *do* understand the Big Picture, it becoems obvious.\n\nI can't explain to a starving thrid world farmer why it's in his interests to become literate, along with the rest of his village, so they can better understand how to, say, help prevent epidemics in the short term (by being able to understand routes of transmission better) or bring about democracy in the long term.  But living in the industrialized west, the benefits of literacy are manifest.  The person who doesn't understand science seems to me in many ways to be like that starving farmer.\n\nPeople who understand science will dictate the fate of much in the world, and they will have the power to do much good.  By not making an effort to learn science, you set yourself back greatly.  But by actively attacking science--like the starving farming burning a public library, or like the Haitian who steals the copper wires set up to build an electrical infrastructure that would bring long-term prosperity in exchange for a short-term benefit in selling scrap metal--the skeptic zealots do themselves and the entire Christian faith a great disservice.\n\nIn response to your additional questions:\n1-4 are NOT--repeat, they are NOT--aspects of the theory of evolution by natural selection.  This is exactly what I'm talking about--people are criticizing a theory they don't even begin to understand.\n\n1) refers to the Big Bang theory, not evolution by natural selection.  2) is a theory of planetary formation, not a theory of speciation.  3) and 4) are aspects of a theory of abiogenesis, which is different from evolution.  Only 5) actually regards evolution.\n\nEvolution by natural selection dictates that small variations between members of a species accumulate over the long term to become major changes, resulting in speciation.  And yes, I believe that that happened.\n\nI have issues with the big bang, but those are not relevant here--they are for reasons of physics that go beyond what I can explain right here.\n\nPlanetary formation, while not a part of evolution, is largely unavoidable.  All matter has mass, and this results in gravitational attraction.  If dust is in space, it will collapse in on itself.  Physics-wise, this is about as mind-blowing as the fact that water + dirt = mud.  It would be a greater stretch of the imagination to imagine such formation not occuring, because the laws that dictate such a formation are at work all around us all the time.\n\n
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Great stuff going on right now having to do with developmental genes (like Hox genes).  You may know this as "Evo Devo" or evolutionary developmental biology.\n\nCheck out the book "Endless Forms Most Beautiful," by Sean Carroll.  He also gives ideas for research and new fields, lots of peer-reviewed papers.\n\nI just read it this Fall, it was great.
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Though you will ignore the answer, I'll try anyway.  \n\nYour question, with explanation was a classic straw man, so I'll answer your question.\n\nI do not support ID as per se, but, all they are saying is the following:\n\nStep 1:  dna exists.\nStep 2:  later, new dna exists which could not have been eluciadated from existing dna, because there is unquestionably new and unique information in this new dna, which did not exist before.\nStep 3:  how did it happen?  \nStep 4:  it either happened by some still unknown natural or biological mechanism, or it was caused, created.\nStep 5: the natural or biological mechanism seems unlikely as the cause for strictly reasonable and logical reasons.  However, if it could be discovered, it would be one of the most important discoveries ever, and would be communicated as such.  This is still one of the mysteries in biology.  \nStep 6:  new information is not created by natural and random processes.  This just does not occur in nature.  Based on experience and logic.  \nStep 7:  based on the above, it seems that design is involved.\n\nThis is not hard logic.  The point is that you have closed your mind to the issues the ID people are trying to consider, and ID people are fully engaged in science.  What happens if you are wrong?\n\nBasically, ID does not say design is perfect, however, it could very well be optimal, and that takes intelligence, and then it is not a flaw.  ID people have answered your question many times.  Many you need to do some reading.  I cannot say the retina is shoddely wired.  Your remark was a rhetorical and opinionated remark.\n\nNot trying to give you a hard time.  Just the facts.\n\nEdit:  Anything that is proven by science, I agree with.  Duplication is well known.  I hope I was clear.  The issue is:  Here is dna without a certain new function, like a lung, or kidney, or brain, or eye, or skin, of bone, or hair, of tear duct, or immune response, etc.  Later, a 100 lines, or millions of lines of new dna exist with this code.  Duplication is not the mechanism, for the function did not exist, and requires some pretty profound new engineering to create.  The unanswered question is:  how did it happen?  Randomness cannot be part of the solution, since the improbabilities are far too great.  \n\nCan this question be answered, or is it still open?  The answer I usually get is, well just because we do not know, does not mean we should accept the possibility of a creator.  I say, you should consider both, until we have an answer.  You may lean one way or the other, but both are still possibilities.  \n\nThe most knowledgeable scientists agree for example, in cosmology, the closer we get to the beginning of the universe, the more the questions become philosophical and theological.  You are discounting a vital side of the story.
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the things you say (or the article said) seem to be true about evolution because the hypothesis is so plastic...however, it is falsifiable and it has been falsified; it has made numerous predictions that have failed miserably\n\nnatural selection is real, it happens\n\nnatural selection does not help evolution\n\nthe reason being that information must first exist to select from\n\nnatural selection can explain the survival and extinction of organisms...but it can not explain the original arrival\n\nfor evolution to be true you need a net gain of highly specific complex information (which first of all has never, at least not in our experience or observation to date, been the result of random processes; it has, in all of our observation thus far, always and only been the result of intelligent mind -- sa information science) however natural selection always results in a loss of information...some info is selected (kept), and some info is neglected (lost)\n\nbut first you gotta have all that info to select from\n\nand you better start out with a lot of it if you're going to be selecting some and neglecting some every generation\n\nwhich still leaves the real problem...where did all that info (that natural selection selects from) come from in the first place
110443
human body and molecular biology..
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NatBoCheck: Well for starters even creationists believe in microevolution, but then you probably don't know what that is.\n\nGive me a few mins...\n\n"The process of evolution can be summarized in three sentences: Genes mutate. [gene: a hereditary unit] Individuals are selected. Populations evolve."\n\n"The mechanisms of evolution are mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, recombination and gene flow."\n\nMutation\n\nThe cellular machinery that copies DNA sometimes makes mistakes. These mistakes alter the sequence of a gene. This is called a mutation. There are many kinds of mutations. A point mutation is a mutation in which one "letter" of the genetic code is changed to another. Lengths of DNA can also be deleted or inserted in a gene; these are also mutations. Finally, genes or parts of genes can become inverted or duplicated. Typical rates of mutation are between 10-10 and 10-12 mutations per base pair of DNA per generation. \n\nNatural Selection\n\nSome types of organisms within a population leave more offspring than others. Over time, the frequency of the more prolific type will increase. The difference in reproductive capability is called natural selection. Natural selection is the only mechanism of adaptive evolution; it is defined as differential reproductive success of pre- existing classes of genetic variants in the gene pool.\n\nThe most common action of natural selection is to remove unfit variants as they arise via mutation. [natural selection: differential reproductive success of genotypes] In other words, natural selection usually prevents new alleles from increasing in frequency. This led a famous evolutionist, George Williams, to say "Evolution proceeds in spite of natural selection."\n\nNatural selection can maintain or deplete genetic variation depending on how it acts.\n\nGenetic Drift\n\nAllele frequencies can change due to chance alone. This is called genetic drift. Drift is a binomial sampling error of the gene pool. What this means is, the alleles that form the next generation's gene pool are a sample of the alleles from the current generation. When sampled from a population, the frequency of alleles differs slightly due to chance alone.\n\nAlleles can increase or decrease in frequency due to drift. The average expected change in allele frequency is zero, since increasing or decreasing in frequency is equally probable. A small percentage of alleles may continually change frequency in a single direction for several generations just as flipping a fair coin may, on occasion, result in a string of heads or tails. A very few new mutant alleles can drift to fixation in this manner.\n\nRecombination\n\nEach chromosome in our sperm or egg cells is a mixture of genes from our mother and our father. Recombination can be thought of as gene shuffling. Most organisms have linear chromosomes and their genes lie at specific location (loci) along them. Bacteria have circular chromosomes. In most sexually reproducing organisms, there are two of each chromosome type in every cell. For instance in humans, every chromosome is paired, one inherited from the mother, the other inherited from the father. When an organism produces gametes, the gametes end up with only one of each chromosome per cell. Haploid gametes are produced from diploid cells by a process called meiosis.\n\nIn meiosis, homologous chromosomes line up. The DNA of the chromosome is broken on both chromosomes in several places and rejoined with the other strand. Later, the two homologous chromosomes are split into two separate cells that divide and become gametes. But, because of recombination, both of the chromosomes are a mix of alleles from the mother and father.\n\nRecombination creates new combinations of alleles. Alleles that arose at different times and different places can be brought together. Recombination can occur not only between genes, but within genes as well. Recombination within a gene can fo
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There is no need to replace evolution as there is no evidence that evoultion is in any way contradictory to reality or lacking in predictive power.\n\nBTW: Shouldn't this be in biology?
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Try this , it really helped me in my first few lectures in cell bio , such as DNA and RNA . Loads of animations and stuff ! \n\nhttp://www.johnkyrk.com/DNAtranscription.html
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Yes. See the links below. I highly encourage everyone who doubts evolution to spend a little time browsing the "tree of life  web" site www.tolweb.org. Look both at the tree diagrams, showing how life has evolved into different species, but also look at the titles of the papers that are referenced on each page. For example, from the Primates page, there are papers with these titles:\n\n"Toward a phylogenetic classification of primates based on DNA evidence complemented by fossil evidence. "\n"A molecular view of primate phylogeny and important systematic and evolutionary questions. "\n"Molecular timing of primate divergences as estimated by two nonprimate calibration points."\n"The oldest known anthropoid postcranial fossils and the early evolution of higher primates."\n"Molecular evidence on primate phylogeny from DNA sequences. "\n\nThere is a huge body of scientific literature that doesn't just say "we think we evolved from apes". It explains in great detail the evolution of all life, and shows where humans fit in the families of hominids, primates, and mammals. There is a great deal of evidence, not just from fossil evidence, but from DNA evidence. The DNA evidence is now far more powerful than the fossil evidence.
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I will have to support Evolution! Let me give you a definition of Evolution!\nBiological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations).\nDocumentation of ancestor-descendant relationships among organisms also comes from the fields of biogeography, taxonomy, anatomy, embryology and, most recently, genetics — particularly DNA analysis.\nThe fossil record remains first and foremost among the databases that document changes in past life on Earth. Fossils provide the dimension of time to the study of life. Some of the most basic observations about fossils and the rock record were made long before Darwin formulated his theory of “descent with modification.” The fossil record clearly shows changes in life through almost any sequence of sedimentary rock layers. Successive rock layers contain different groups or assemblages of fossil species.\n{We have now more than enough fossils to determine for sure that humans didn’t appear on this planet in the genetic form they are today!\nWE HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH EVIDENCE THAT THERE WAS AT LEAST ANOTHER SPECIES WHICH LIVED WITH US!! And I am talking about Neanderthal man who was not our ancestor but a different Human than us!!! (Did God experiment with human species?) We even have proof that at a certain point in time 3 human species shared the planet! (Homo sapiens, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthals)}\nOf course I want comment the stupid argument why all the apes didn’t evolve to humans. Ok I will comment!!\n(We share a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas; we have many anatomical, genetic, biochemical, and even behavioral similarities with these African great apes. We are less similar to the Asian apes--orangutans and gibbons--and even less similar to monkeys, because we share common ancestors with these groups in the more distant past. \n! By the way why God decided to create 5 different species of primates and 280 different species of monkeys?)\nAs a conclusion Evolution is not a theory but a proven fact (In scientific terms, "theory" does not mean "guess" or "hunch" as it does in everyday usage. Scientific theories are explanations of natural phenomena built up logically from testable observations and hypotheses. Biological evolution is the best scientific explanation we have for the enormous range of observations about the living world.) Creation is a Hebrew Myth and unfortunately is not a fact but a myth!!!!