Twisted Tree of Life Award: University of Nebraska Lincoln Press Release on Archaeal Epigenetics

Well this one is really painful. So painful I am re-starting my "Twisted Tree of Life" Award posts here.See Tweets about it below:A lot of pretty painful evolution babble in this press release about archaea epigenetic: Evolution sans mutation discovered in single-celled archaeahttps://t.co/aumbdfhU4R#TwistedTreeOfLife— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics)December 10, 2018For example - there is a claim that this might have something to do with why archaea don't produce antibiotics which would at best be an evolution just so story except for the part where archaea do produce antibiotics (eg Halocins)— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics)December 10, 2018And then there is this whole things about how this raises questions about how archaea and eukaryotes came to adopt epigenetics .. interesting except it ignores that bacteria have epigenetics too— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics)December 10, 2018And then there is "Species most often evolve through DNA mutations inherited by successive generations" which alas ignores this little thing called recombination— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics)December 10, 2018Mind you, the paper looks interesting -- but this PR is really just many levels of awful— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics)December 10, 2018And here is another doozy " “The surprise is that it’s in these relatively primitive organisms, which we know to be ancient,” -- uggh - these are modern organisms - they are neither primitive nor ancient— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomic...
Source: The Tree of Life - Category: Microbiology Authors: Source Type: blogs