Sentences with phrase «of exaptation»

But to truly assess the role of exaptation in evolution, they will need to validate their results in living organisms.

Barve and Wagner's work adds to a growing number of examples of exaptation at the molecular level.

«If that was the only explanation for the incidence of exaptation, that would not be interesting,» Wagner said.

The scientists conclude that this is probably an example of exaptation — when a structure that was meant for one function is co-opted for another.

Not exact matches

At the heart of your Behe article are two concessions which simply don't support ID: 1) the ability of evolution to produce functional novelty via gene duplication / mutation and exaptation exists; and 2) that evidence of «new information» in the form of «new Functional Coded elemenTs, or «FCTs»» also exists.

«I think it's becoming increasingly clear that exaptation is very important in the evolution of biologically important processes,» said Joe Thornton, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon, who was not involved in the study.

The results of the study, which focused on metabolism, complement anecdotal examples and take an initial step toward quantifying exaptation's contribution, at least within this system, said researchers not involved in the work.

Instead, the complexity of the network appeared to determine its flexibility; the more reactions in a network, the greater its potential for exaptation.

As they described it, exaptation is a counterpart to the more familiar concept of adaptation.

The strength of Barve and Wagner's theoretical approach was that they could definitely demonstrate the potential for exaptation outside of any historical context.

The order and arrangement of the bones in the four limbs of land - dwelling animals are an exaptation for walking on land, since these limbs originally evolved for navigating water; by contrast, changes to the shape of the bones and to the musculature are adaptations, Gould and Vrba wrote.

Birds» and bats» wings could be called exaptations of arms; however, the structural changes that followed can not be called adaptations because «you are talking about a historical incident; it's not something you can test,» said Mark Norell, a vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who studied with Vrba.

This suggests that exaptation was critical for the genesis of the first nerve cell, with eumetazoan - specific gene innovations providing the regulatory and structural requirements to connect these protoneural components into a functional neuron (Fig. 3b).