E ainda dizem que a Folha de São Paulo pratica jornalismo moderno, objetivo e imparcial. Nada mais falso quando a questão é Darwin.
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Crunching the Data for the Tree of Life
Illustration by Thomas Porostocky; Photographs, from left, by Michael Sanderson; Mciary Altaffer/Associated Press; Tal Dagan and William Martin
Biology’s tree of life has grown out of a simple sketch by Darwin (center) into many and varied new attempts to visualize the diversity of life. The Paleoverde program (left) allows a user to cruise through thousands of species with the movements of a mouse. Above right, a particular gene is traced to visualize how different species are related.
By CARL ZIMMER
Published: February 9, 2009
Michael Sanderson is worried. Dr. Sanderson, a biologist at the University of Arizona, is part of an effort to figure out how all the estimated 500,000 species of plants are related to one another. For years now the researchers have sequenced DNA from thousands of species from jungles, tundras and museum drawers. They have used supercomputers to crunch the genetic data and have gleaned clues to how today’s diversity of baobobs, dandelions, mosses and other plants evolved over the past 450 million years. The pace of their progress gives Dr. Sanderson hope that they will draw the entire evolutionary tree of plants within the next few years. “It’s within striking distance,” Dr. Sanderson said.
There’s just one problem. “We have no way to visualize such a tree at the moment,” he said. If they tried, they would end up with a blurry, inscrutable thicket. “It would be ironic,” Dr. Sanderson said. “We’d be saying, ‘We’ve built it, but we can’t show it to you.’ ”
Leia mais aqui e aqui.
Sorry periferia, mas está em inglês.
