Molecular taxonomy: on way out?

[Richard.Zander at MOBOT.ORG]

Hang on, now. It's the interrelationships of the genes, promoters,
regulators, and whatnot that determine the phenotype which is the focus of
evolutionary selection. I get an implication from your sentence (below),
Les, that ALL available information is now relatively accessible.
Phylogenetic analyses that evaluate accumulations of mutations in junk DNA
may not be tracking phenotypic expressions of variously regulated exons.
Interrelationships ("phenomics") are hardly relatively accessible at the
present time.

This paper:

Collin, R. & R. Cipriani. 2003. Dollo's law and the re-evolution of shell
coiling. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 270: 2551--2555.

demonstrates that massive homoplasy may not be incremental in accumulation.
It's an important paper and may be of help to those who can't deal with very
well supported molecular evidence that contradicts well-supported
mult-character morphological relationships.

______________________
Richard H. Zander
Bryology Group, Missouri Botanical Garden
PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA
richard.zander at mobot.org <mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Voice: 314-577-5180;  Fax: 314-577-9595
Websites
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http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: Les Watson [mailto:leswatson at WESTNET.COM.AU]
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 4:31 AM
To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] Molecular taxonomy: on way out?

You may well be right, especially re "the current systematic
approaches"; but total DNA extracts contain ALL the available
information for extant organisms, in relatively accessible form.