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Evolution (human) happens....

Discover how the post-genomic era reshapes our understanding of human evolution and positive selection in humans.

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One of the things that really pisses me off about the Evolution-Creation "debate" is that it uses up oxygen that could be profitably allotted to documenting the tsunami of data emerging out of the "post-genomic" era. The actual examination of evolution is not just an academic exercise, as much of the recent work coming out of laboratories deals with humans.^1 For example, Dienekes points me to this preprint in The American Journal of Human Genetics, Spread of an inactive form of caspase-12 in humans due to recent positive selection:

...There is strong evidence for positive selection from low diversity, skewed allele frequency spectra and the predominance of a single haplotype. We suggest that the inactive form of the gene arose in Africa ~100-500 thousand years ago (KYA) and was initially neutral or almost neutral, but that positive selection beginning ~60-100 KYA drove it to near-fixation. We further propose that its ...

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