1) First, a post from the past: “Black” & white twins again. 2) Weird search query of the week: "buff chimpanzee." 3) Comment of the week, in response to The evolution of man is no cartoon:
I think the confounding notion here is that changes to the DNA which don’t affect a protein’s amino acid sequence are selectively neutral. It’s endemic, and yet there are several very obvious counterexamples. True. But as a first approximation, it is still a reasonable practice. For every 1000 amino acid changes one will find A LOT more functional effects than for every 1000 silent mutations. Keep in mind that your argument can be taken in reverse, too: there are some obvious examples where amino acid change does not result in a detectable change of properties.
4) And finally, your weekly fluff fix:
