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This study examines freshman undergraduate biology majors' understanding and application of the concept of common ancestry. We used a survey that asked students to provide a brief definition of common ancestry and to rate their confidence that different pairs of organisms shared a common ancestor. ...
The nature of the universal ancestor and the evolution of the proteome W FordDoolittle, inCurrent Opinion in Structural Biology, 2000 Can we reconstruct theproteomeof that universal ancestor? In recent years, many authors[2,3•,4,5,6•,7–10]have used comparisons of the gene contents of...
Brian K. Hall, in Philosophy of Biology, 2007 10 REVERSALS To be identified as a reversal, rudiment, vestige or atavism a feature must bear a high degree of similarity to a character found in an ancestor,21 a circumstance that suggests a conserved feature and so raises suspicions concerning ...
The concept of a last universal common ancestor of all cells (LUCA, or the progenote) is central to the study of early evolution and life's origin, yet information about how and where LUCA lived is lacking. We investigated all clusters and phylogenetic trees for 6.1 million protein coding ...
What Do You See in Common? Learning Hierarchical Prototypes over Tree-of-Life to Discover Evolutionary Traits A grand challenge in biology is to discover evolutionary traits - features of organisms common to a group of species with a shared ancestor in the tree of ......
It is believed that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor approximately 13 million years ago. All chimpanzees are intelligent, social animals. Researchers have observed chimpanzees using rudimentary tools, such as sticks and rocks, and engaging in political power struggles within their ...
The hypothesis that all life on earth traces back to a single common ancestor is a fundamental postulate in modern evolutionary theory. Yet, despite its widespread acceptance in biology, there has been comparatively little attention to formally testing this "hypothesis of common ancestry". We review...
E.G.Nisbet,C.M.R.Fowler, inTreatise on Geochemistry, 2003 8.01.5.3The Last Common Ancestor Thelastcommon ancestor is more accessible togeologyandmolecular biologythan the first ancestor. Though not less controversial than the first ancestor, it is at least the subject of testable hypotheses. ...
Since the reclassification of all life forms in three Domains (Archaea, Bacteria, Eukarya), the identity of their alleged forerunner (Last Universal Common Ancestor or LUCA) has been the subject of extensive controversies: progenote or already complex or