Two developments helped Peter and Rosemary Grant to peer into the genomes of finches. The first was the invention of tools to measure microsatellite DNA. With more than a dozen genetic loci they were able to characterize each finch with a unique DNA signature.
Muir’s experiments reveal a tremendous naiveté in the idea that creating a good society is merely a matter of selecting the “best” individuals. A good society requires members working together to create what cannot be produced alone, or at least to refrain from exploiting each other.
Corals grow in shapes specific to their surroundings, but this plasticity often masks evolutionary relationships. One must look closer...Sahale Casebolt, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, is comparing micro-features of fossil and modern corals with their DNA sequences to reveal evolutionary relationships.