Research highlight by Kazuharu Arakawa and Masaru Tomita, Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, JapanGene duplications and mutations are central driving forces in the evolution of genomes. Genomes must be robust to such changes in order to be

http://blog-msb.embo.org/blog/2008/04/evolvability_and_hierarchy_in.html

This weeks paper, Evolvability and hierarchy in rewired bacterial gene networks, was suggested by Joel Lopez.Randomly changing parts in a machine often breaks it. Intelligent design nuts claim this is also true of living things and that this is somehow evidence

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/denis036/thisweekinevolution/2008/04/gene_networ...

In my new Dissection column over at Wired, I take a look at a remarkable new experiment on E. coli. Scientists randomly rewired the network of genes that control much of the microbe's activity and found that it generally just kept humming along.One thing worth

http://www.scienceblogs.com/loom/2008/04/19/is_there_nothing_e_coli_cann...

Noticed while leafing through today's Nature that Pedro has a paper out (Isalan et al., Evolvability and hierarchy in rewired bacterial gene networks).There's more on this over at Public Rambling.

http://www.ghastlyfop.com/blog/2008/04/nice-work-pedro.html

On a more scientific and interesting note, a new paper in Nature reports on what happens to E.coli if you mess with its regulatory network in a big way. Not only is the paper interesting, but fellow blogger Pedro Beltrao is one of the authors.The paper takes

http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2008/04/scrambling-ecoli.html