Turning around

[John Grehan]

Unfortunately it hasn't turned around at all when it comes to human and great ape relationships. The absolute belief in DNA sequence similarities as the last word on our nearest living relative continues to reign supreme while contradictory morphological evidence is either denigrated out of hand or ignored (the most common response) and popular science media shudder at the thought of questioning the deification of DNA based hominoid evolution.

John Grehan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom Discussion List [mailto:TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU] On
> Behalf Of buchen
> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 12:14 PM
> To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] Turning around
> 
> I keep my fingers crossed that we are waking up!
> 
> Cornelia Büchen-Osmond
> ICTVdB Management
> Columbia University
> 
> 47 Glenmore Drive
> Durham, NC 27707, USA
> Phone: 1 (919) 493 0547
> Email: cb2009 at columbia.edu
> ICTVdB web sites
> home:   http://phene.cpmc.columbia.edu/
> NCBI:   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ICTVdb/
> Europe: http://www.ictvdb.rothamsted.ac.uk/
> China:   http://ictvdb.mirror.ac.cn/
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom Discussion List [mailto:TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU] On
> Behalf
> Of Richard.Zander at MOBOT.ORG
> Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2006 11:56 AM
> To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: [TAXACOM] Turning around
> 
> It's turning around.
> 
> The original idea of molecular taxonomy (I believe) was to infer nested
> events of genetic isolation (following the Biological Species Concept)
> from
> accumulations of evolutionary neutral molecular mutations. The limitations
> of this simplistic idea are many and have become obvious, and, I hope,
> embarrassing. Evolutionary development, proteomics/phenomics, and a
> resurgence of taxonomists interested in process-based evolution are
> presently attacking the default definition "systematics is phylogenetics
> and
> its applications in classification."
> 
> ______________________
> 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: 314-577-0828
> Websites
> Bryophyte Volumes of Flora of North America:
> http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
> Res Botanica:
> http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/index.htm
> Shipping address for UPS, etc.:
> Missouri Botanical Garden
> 4344 Shaw Blvd.
> St. Louis, MO 63110 USA
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: buchen [mailto:cb2009 at COLUMBIA.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:51 AM
> To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] TDWG/GBIF GUID-1 Workshop Report
> 
> I wish I could believe that there are still sane people out there, looking
> at the biology of an organism rather than the genetic makeup.  I think it
> is
> more important to register the gene expression, the structure and function
> rather than to compare mindlessly sequences against each other and build
> phylogenetic tress based on only a single gene and not the whole organism.