"For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science" – Chris Mooney, Author of Unscientific America

Chris has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since he released the bestseller, The Republican War on Science, in 2006. Chris cites some famous stats that scientific illiteracy is increasing: 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. In his new book, he points the finger at a profit driven media, science phobic politicians, and the arrogance of scientists themselves. (Chris' recent showdown with famous science blogger PZ Myers is widely documented). His main point: this gap hinders productivity and has us falling behind in global innovation.

Then there was the recent Pew survey showing a widening gap between scientists and the public on key issues of global warming, evolution, and use of animals in research. The survey also looked at scientific illiteracy using a 12 question quiz (Take the quiz yourself!) with some surprising results:

• 54% incorrectly identified electrons as bigger than atoms
• 46% thought antibiotics kills viruses as well as bacteria
• 24% failed to correctly a basic question on plate tectonics

But it isn't all doom and gloom, Chris outlines his strategy for closing that gap including sexing up science and training a new generation of science ambassadors in society at large.

Chris Mooney: Unscientific America

When: Monday, August 3^rd 630 PM – 830 PM

Where: Kellogg Auditorium, Silicon Valley Bank, 3005 Tasman Dr., Santa Clara, CA

Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing

Cost: $15 members and non-members advance. $20 members and non-members at the door, Tickets

Scientists used evolutionary theory to figure out where
to find the bones of this fishibian.
Lately I have been reading Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. And so far it is a fascinating read.

What is so great about this book for a scientist is that it gives the big picture on evolution. This sort of thing can be hard to get sometimes because we scientists are so specialized. As I like to tell people, I worked on a single amino acid of a single human protein for my postdoctoral project. For three years.

Coyne's book synthesizes genetics, anatomy, biogeography, physiology, paleontology, geology, and lots of other "ologies" to show how strong the case is for evolution. This is great for me because, of course, I tend to focus on genetics and molecular biology and spend less time on the other fields. Which means I miss important, subtle nuances to some big findings.

For example, I had heard about the fossil of Tiktaalik roseae that was found in 2004 that linked fish to amphibians. This was a huge deal because the animal that the bones came from had characteristics of both fish and amphibians. And it appeared in the fossil record at the right time to be a transitional animal between the two.

What I hadn't fully appreciated was that the scientists decided to look where they did based on how old they thought the fossil should be. In other words, they were able to use the theory of evolution to predict where to find the fossil they were looking for.

They knew from previous fossil finds that something like Tiktaalik roseae would have appeared between 360 and 390 million years ago. The scientists also knew from previous research that the beast would have been in freshwater. So they got out a geological map and looked for places that met these criteria. They settled on Ellesmere Island in Canada and after five years, they found this marvelous fossil.

This is important for a lot of reasons. One is that it obviously tells us a lot about how vertebrates emerged onto dry land. Another is that it provides further validation of geological dating methods. They had to rely on these methods to know where to look for the fossil and the methods worked.

This find is also important because it is based on a prediction made by evolutionary theory. Around 390 million years ago, the only vertebrates were fish. By 360 million years ago, there were four-footed vertebrates on land. So the scientists looked in a place that was 375 million years old.

Scientists used evolution to make a testable prediction that turned out to be true. And evolution came through with flying colors like any good scientific theory should.

This month marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species. If Darwin were alive today, I think he would be very pleased.

He would undoubtedly be very excited about everything we've learned about biology since his time. Like the rest of us, he would be awed by the beauty, grandeur, and complexity of life on Earth.

He would also be pleased that his ideas about natural selection and evolution are to date the only scientific explanation for all of this. His ideas pervade every aspect of modern biology from medicine to genomics to ecology.

His theories dominate because they are supported by mountains of evidence (Read Why Evolution is True to find out more about the data that supports evolution. You can click here for a review of the book.). The evidence in support of evolution is so overwhelming that there is no real debate about it among biologists.

Of course, like any scientific theory, not every "t" is crossed nor every "i" dotted. But that is more of a reflection on how science works rather than the theory itself.

A scientist gathers some data and then proposes a hypothesis to explain that data. Then the scientist does some experiments to test the hypothesis. The new data either supports the hypothesis, requires that the scientist modify the hypothesis to fit the new data, or requires the scientist to come up with a new hypothesis that better explains the data. Then scientists repeat this process over and over again until the hypotheses can be unified into a theory.

This has gone on for 150 years or so for evolution and if anything, evolution is stronger than it was before. Sure, every now and then a hypothesis within the theory needs to be modified but the theory remains as strong as ever.

In fact, no point of contention has yet been raised that is the straw that will break evolution's back. And there is nothing obvious on the horizon that will.

Darwin would also probably not be surprised that his theory remains controversial because it seems to fly in the face of a Creator. Which is of course nonsense. Despite worries about how Earth being the center of the Universe would cast doubts on the Creator, Christianity survived Copernicus and Galileo. And it will survive Darwin as well.

I heard this interesting interview on NPR over the weekend with Richard Dawkins about his book, The God Delusion. In the interview, Dawkins states that it seems unlikely to him that God would create a Universe that could be explained by natural causes. I disagree.

My understanding is that Christianity is based on faith. If a Creator made the Universe in such a way that scientists could show the Earth was 10,000 years old, then of course a Creator exists. That is the only possibility. So where is the faith in that? How would it be different than the Creator greeting each person and welcoming him or her to the Creator's Universe?

To me it makes sense that a Creator would make a world that was or could be formed naturally. In which case it doesn't really matter scientifically whether life arose on Earth through a Creator or by chance. Both ways require evolution. Thank you Charles Darwin for giving us this great framework within which we can understand life here on Earth.

Today QUEST TV broadcasts its half-hour documentary "Chasing Beetles, Finding Darwin," which tells the story of California Academy of Sciences beetle expert David Kavanaugh's unusual prediction that a new species of beetle would be found in Northern California's Trinity Alps.

The film follows Kavanaugh and his collaborator, University of California-Berkeley doctoral candidate Sean Schoville, as they search for the beetle, then put possible candidates to the test by dissecting them under the microscope and doing genetic testing on them.

It's rare for a biologist to predict the discovery of a new species – even for someone like Kavanaugh, who has discovered 73 new species. For his prediction, he drew inspiration from Charles Darwin's own prediction, which the English naturalist and founder of modern evolutionary biology made in 1862.

When Darwin saw an orchid from Madagascar with a foot-long nectare, he predicted that a pollinator would be found with a tongue (called a proboscis) long enough to reach the nectar inside the orchid's very thin, elongated nectar "pouch." Darwin's prediction was based on his finding that all living beings are related to each other and that some of them evolve closely together. His prediction came true in 1903, when a moth was discovered in Madagascar with a long, thin proboscis, which it uncurls to reach the nectar in the orchid's nectare. In the process of feeding from the orchid, the moth serves as its pollinator. The moth was given the scientific name Xanthopan morganii praedicta, in honor of Darwin’s prediction.

"Chasing Beetles, Finding Darwin" is QUEST TV's contribution to the celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book "On the Origin of Species."

Watch Chasing Beetles, Finding Darwin online. You can also see additional photos for this story.

This year marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin – and the 150th anniversary of his landmark work, "On the Origin of Species". One of the iconic fossils that supports Darwin's theory of evolution is called the Archaeopteryx and it was recently flown out to Stanford University for an unusual test. Scientists are bombarding this dino-bird with high-tech gadgetry to unlock even more information about how we came to be here.

There are dozens of events celebrating Darwin this month. You can also join QUEST at one of them. On February 26th, QUEST will be screening our half-hour documentary, "Chasing Beetles, Finding Darwin" at the California Academy of Sciences. We'll be joined by two scientists featured in the story. You can get more info or buy tickets here.

Listen to the Investigating Darwin's Legacy radio report online.

As I mentioned in a previous post, February 12th marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of Species".

All across the world, scientists are leading a month long celebration of the man and his science, widely seen as the public hero of science and science education.

San Francisco is one of the cities leading the celebration with nearly a hundred evolution specific events throughout the month. Below are a few of my naturally selected picks to celebrate Darwin. For a complete list, check here.

Darwin: the Man, his Science, and his Legacy – UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology 2/7 9:00am-4:00pm
A University of California Museum of Paleontology short course open to the public and particularly geared toward K-16 educators and anyone interested in Darwin and evolution! Call it Darwin 101 & 102.

Darwin Days Book Club: Darwin’s Ghost – Exploratorium 2/8 8:00pm
A lively exchange on this modern-day vision of Darwin’s most notable work. It's better than reading "The Origin of Species".

SF Debate: The Ethics of Personal Genetics – Exploratorium 2/11 7:00pm
An intelligent debate on the ethical questions emerging around sequencing one's personal genome and how that information may be used.

EVOLVE 2009 Kick-Off Party @ Nightlife – California Academy of Sciences 2/12 6:00pm
Explore the Academy's Islands of Evolution exhibit while sipping cocktails and grooving to the beat of an Om Records DJ. Even Charles could appreciate a nice cocktail and some good beats.

Explore Amour: Tracing the Origins of Love - Exploratorium 2/14 2:00pm
Discover the science behind sweet nothings with Dr. Thomas Lewis as he offers a Darwinian twist on modern romance. In a Q&A following his presentation, Dr. Lewis will respond to your passionate questions on love.

Bad Science Film Festival – San Francisco Public Library 2/21 1:00pm
Come to the San Francisco Public Library for an afternoon of movies featuring wacky and weird scientific inaccuracies. Somehow Keanu Reeves avoided this festival.

Porchlight: Evolve – Verdi Club 2/23 8:00pm
Join writer-sketch comedian Beth Lisick and writer-editor Arline Klatte as they begin their 7th year for a special evening with stories centered around evolution.

This photomicrograph shows Cyanobacteria (green) found
in a common pond. Image source: Wayne LanierLast blog I talked about mitochondria. These are the parts of a cell that ultimately turn our food into energy. They also have a very interesting past.

A billion years ago or so, mitochondria were free living bacteria. Then our ancestors hijacked them and now they do our bidding. And mitochondria aren't the only cells that got hijacked. So did the chloroplast’s ancestors.

Chloroplasts are the part of a plant cell that turns sunshine into sugar. Every green plant that we’ve looked at has them. And chloroplasts were almost certainly once free living cyanobacteria.

Both mitochondria and chloroplasts still have many bacterial qualities including having their own DNA. But they don't have a lot of their old DNA left. Most of it has migrated to where the rest of our DNA is kept—the nucleus. Or at least that's the theory.

Do scientists have any proof that DNA can move in a cell from compartment to compartment? As a matter of fact they do. At least with the chloroplast.

Scientists used their ability to put DNA specifically into a chloroplast or mitochondrion to design an experiment to look for cells where DNA had migrated. What they did was put some DNA into a chloroplast that could only be read in the nucleus. (Remember, chloroplasts and mitochondria are different enough that nuclear DNA doesn't work there and vice versa.)

The DNA they put in made the plant resistant to a poison IF the DNA could be read. One way the plant could survive was if the DNA they put in the chloroplast ended up moving from there to the nucleus. And it did.

In fact, it was pretty common in their experiment. The DNA moved in something like 1 in 16,000 pollen cells. A rate like this suggests that, for example, different cells on the same leaf might have different amounts of chloroplast DNA in their nuclei.

So DNA can move from the chloroplast to the nucleus. And probably from the mitochondrion to the nucleus too. The evidence is less direct for this but there is plenty of DNA in the nuclei of lots of different plants and animals that looks very mitochondrion-like.

This all fits in with our understanding that DNA is not as stable as a lot of people think. DNA changes between generations and within an organism. Chromosomes can get rearranged, genes copied or deleted, small DNA changes can happen and who knows what else. And these changes are a big part of the motor that drives evolution.

Mole voles do fine with one X and no Y
chromosome.

Last blog I talked about the Transcaucasian mole vole. This little burrowing mammal has lost its Y chromosome over time. Now both males and females have only a single X.

I focused on how scientists can't yet figure out how there are any male mole voles running around. This week, I want to focus on what this means from an evolutionary perspective.

These little animals show that massive changes in chromosome structure can be tolerated and the species can do quite well. Even when the chromosomal change results in a significant increase in miscarriages.

About half of a mole vole's fertilized eggs don't survive to term. Why not? Because these embryos have either no or two copies of the X chromosome.

Most mammals have two copies of each of their chromosomes– one from mom and one from dad. At the end of meiosis, each chromosome copy ends up in a different sperm or egg. This is so that when an egg and a sperm combine, the new mammal has the right number of chromosomes.

Mole voles end up with half of their sperm or eggs with one X chromosome and the other half with no X chromosome. There is a 1 in 4 chance that a sperm without an X chromosome will fertilize an egg without an X chromosome. Since mammals need an X chromosome to survive, these fertilized eggs don’t make it to term.

There is also a 1 in 4 chance that a sperm with an X chromosome will fertilize an egg with an X chromosome. In most mammals, this would be OK– the fertilized egg would go on to become a female.

But this is fatal for mole voles. Most likely this is because these animals have a defective Xist gene. This gene's job is to keep only one X chromosome on in any cell.

Whatever the reason, these mole voles deal fine with the fact that half their fertilized eggs do not make it to term. This means that chromosomal rearrangements and changes that affect fertility can be tolerated. At least in the mole vole.

This is important because one of the key differences between a chimpanzee and a human at the chromosome level is that humans have 46 chromosomes and chimpanzees have 48. Looking at the DNA we see that human chromosome 2 looks just like chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13 fused together.

Some people argue that this sort of rearrangement wouldn't be successful because at an early transition stage from 48 to 46 chromosomes, half the fertilized eggs would not make it to term. These fertilized eggs would either be missing or have an extra chromosome. Just like the mole vole.

Here we have a mammalian example where this isn't an issue. This little mole vole is doing quite fine thank you very much. As our ancestors most likely did too.

These fish can tell us a lot about ourselves.

Species often end up a different color when their environment changes. And humans are no exception.

When people moved out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago, they were dark-skinned. Now when we look around Northern Europe or parts of Asia, we see much lighter people. What happened?

A common explanation has to do with sunlight and vitamin D. When people moved north, they got less sun. Less sun means less vitamin D and awful diseases like rickets.

Anyone who moved north and had lighter skin ended up getting more vitamin D and did better than their darker neighbors. After awhile, most of the population had light skin.

This is all well and good, but what happened at the gene level to cause this transformation? One way scientists are learning about how humans ended up with lighter skin is by studying fish. For example, the zebrafish has taught us a lot about why Europeans are often so pale.

The zebrafish is an important model system that scientists use to study vertebrate development, human disease, and lots of other things. A common mutant fish that scientists use in these studies is called "golden." These fish have lighter, yellowish stripes instead of black ones.

Scientists discovered that these mutant fish had yellow stripes because of a single DNA difference (or SNP*) in their SLC24A5 gene. When fish have this DNA difference, they have yellow stripes.

These scientists next looked for this gene in people. What they found was that most of the people they looked at had two copies of the "black stripe" version of the gene. Except for Europeans. They tended to share a common SNP in their SLC24A5 gene that the scientists went on to show is a big part of why many Europeans have lighter skin.

Another group of researchers decided to dig a bit deeper and find out when this transformation happened. By looking at the DNA around SLC24A5, they found that lighter skin came to dominate Europe around 6,000-12,000 years ago. At first this result is a bit confusing because humans moved into Europe around 40,000 years ago. Why did it take so long for lighter skin to become the norm?

Scientists can't know for sure but one idea is diet. Around this time, Europeans started to grow their own food. And a farmer's diet has less vitamin D than does a hunter-gatherer's diet. Maybe the lack of sun only started to affect Europeans after they started growing their own food. Then, after a relatively brief time, most Europeans ended up fair-skinned to get enough vitamin D.

This gene doesn't explain all of skin color. For example, it doesn’t explain the difference in color between Northern and Southern Europeans. Or why some Asians have fair skin. But it does explain a good deal of European coloration. Thanks, zebrafish!

*SNP=single nucleotide polymorphism

Dr. Barry Starr is a Geneticist-in-Residence at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA.

Genetically, we're all pretty much the same. A massive volcanic eruption 75,000 years ago may be why.

Lake Toba is all that is left of the volcano
that nearly wiped out mankind.Last blog I talked about how East Africans are genetically more diverse than Asians. Who are genetically more diverse than Native Americans.

From all of this you might have concluded that people are pretty different from each other. They aren't.

People are surprisingly similar at a genetic level. For example, any two people from anywhere on Earth are more similar than two chimps from the same troop. Why are we all so alike?

One possible explanation is that something in our collective past nearly wiped us all out. And we all come from the few survivors who were left.

A likely candidate for this near annihilation event is the Toba volcanic eruption that happened in Indonesia 75,000 or so years ago. This eruption was huge.

It was equivalent to around 1 billion tons of dynamite and was about 3000 times more powerful than the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980. It also may have reduced the average global temperature by 5 degrees Celsius, darkened the world for 5 or 6 years, and plunged the world into a new Ice Age.

As you might imagine, this eruption had dramatic effects on species around the world including our own. Estimates of how many people were left range from around 1000-10,000 breeding pairs. The theory is that we are all so alike because we share these survivors' DNA.

Whether true or not, a bottleneck in our past would not make us unique. Lots of species go through these near death experiences.

Scientists think cheetahs went through one around 10,000 years ago. Cheetahs are all so similar genetically that veterinarians can do skin grafts with "unrelated" cheetahs.

And of course, people have created bottlenecks in species too. For example, in the late 1890's there may have only been 20-100 elephant seals left in the world because of hunting. Now there are at least 150,000 spread across the west coast.

Species are in danger long after they go through a bottleneck. They have a pretty limited gene pool which means they may not be particularly healthy and are in danger of being wiped out by, for example, a single disease. Humans are probably OK in this regard (consider natural resistance to HIV for example) but elephant seals, bison, and cheetahs, and many other species may not be.

Fortunately for us we successfully came through our bottleneck. Hopefully, the animals that we've nearly wiped out will too.

Dr. Barry Starr is a Geneticist-in-Residence at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA.