Sentences with phrase «evolutionary change in their function»

Before this study, scientists debated how these immune genes can evolve rapidly (which is necessary to keep up with the fast - evolving parasites), whilst also showing little or no evolutionary change in their function over millions of years, as observed between humans and chimpanzees.

Not exact matches

While particular structures of the brain can be seen in terms of their evolutionary heritage, the functions of many of these structures have changed and are much more complicated than previously thought.

Among his strongest points is that observations that demonstrate gradual evolutionary changes in specific characteristics (beak shape of finches, color of forest moths, for instance) do not establish how gradual changes could bring about major evolutionary transitions that require concerted functioning of many specialized organs — such as the change from arboreal mammals to night - flying bats, or the origin of life.

«The fact that there is so much change must reflect something about function,» says George Goslow Jr., an evolutionary biologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The interplay between fly and microbes has come to fascinate evolutionary biologists, as genes in both bacterium and host change across generations, sometimes breaking down or taking on odd functions, depending on what the other partner is doing.

Though the switch may have evolved as an accidental consequence of a shape change in an unimportant functioning part of the Sup35, its conservation suggests an evolutionary advantage.