921
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Since January 1, 2014
- A History of the World since 1300 (67)
- History of Rock, 1970-Present (50)
- A Brief History of Humankind (48)
- The Modern World: Global History since 1760 (35)
- Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science (33)
- The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future (28)
- Introduction aux éthiques philosophiques (27)
- Roman Architecture (25)
- Jesus in Scripture and Tradition (25)
- Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender (23)
- Descubriendo la pintura europea de 1400 a 1800 (22)
- Introduction aux droits de l'homme (19)
- Buddhism and Modern Psychology (18)
- Calvin: Histoire et réception d'une Réforme (17)
- The Ancient Greeks (16)
- The French Revolution (15)
- À la découverte du théâtre classique français (15)
- Christianisme et philosophie dans l'Antiquité (14)
- Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases (14)
- Letters of the Apostle Paul (14)
- Egiptología (12)
- Western Music History through Performance (10)
- Phenomenology and the Conscious Mind (9)
- Human Evolution: Past and Future (9)
- Greek and Roman Mythology (9)
- Alexander the Great (9)
- The Great War and Modern Philosophy (9)
- The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture (9)
- Villes africaines: la planification urbaine (8)
- Masterpieces of World Literature (8)
- Programming Mobile Applications for Android (7)
- Introduction to Psychology (7)
- Fundamentos de la escritura en español (7)
- MongoDB for Node.js Developers (7)
- Pensamiento Científico (7)
- Greeks at War: Homer at Troy (7)
- Lingua e cultura italiana: avanzata (6)
- A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior (6)
- The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (6)
- Reason and Persuasion Through Plato's Dialogues (6)
- Fake News, Facts, and Alternative Facts (6)
- Karl der Große - Pater Europae (6)
- The Rooseveltian Century (6)
- Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (5)
- Dinosaur Paleobiology (5)
- Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity (5)
- L'avenir de la décision : connaître et agir en complexité (5)
- Designing Cities (4)
- Problèmes métaphysiques à l'épreuve de la politique, 1943-1968 (4)
- The Kennedy Half Century (4)
- Introduction to Public Speaking (4)
- Emergence of Life (4)
- War for the Greater Middle East (4)
- Postwar Abstract Painting (3)
- Découvrir l'anthropologie (3)
- Analyzing the Universe (3)
- The Music of the Beatles (3)
- La visione del mondo della Relatività e della Meccanica Quantistica (3)
- Initiation à la programmation en Java (3)
- Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life (3)
- History of Rock and Roll, Part One (3)
- La Commedia di Dante (3)
- Devenir entrepreneur du changement (3)
- Introduction à la philosophie de Friedrich Nietzsche (3)
- Moons of Our Solar System (3)
- Orientierung Geschichte (3)
- Paleontology: Early Vertebrate Evolution (3)
- Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe (3)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (2)
- L'art des structures 1 : Câbles et arcs (2)
- Art History for Artists, Animators and Gamers (2)
- Introduction to Classical Music (2)
- Galaxies and Cosmology (2)
- The Science of Gastronomy (2)
- The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (2)
- Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity (2)
- Philosophy and the Sciences (2)
- Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication (2)
- The European Discovery of China (2)
- Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (2)
- Découvrir la science politique (2)
- Introduction à la programmation en C++ (2)
- Géopolitique de l'Europe (2)
- Gestion des aires protégées en Afrique (2)
- Lingua e letteratura in italiano (2)
- The Changing Landscape of Ancient Rome (2)
- Materials Science: 10 Things Every Engineer Should Know (2)
- Highlights of Modern Astronomy (2)
- La Philanthropie : Comprendre et Agir (2)
- The Science of Religion (2)
- Advertising and Society (1)
- America Through Foreign Eyes (1)
- Superpowers of the Ancient World: the Near East (1)
- The Art of Poetry (1)
- Bemerkenswerte Menschen (1)
- Big History: From the Big Bang until Today (1)
- Controversies of British Imperialism (1)
- Age of Cathedrals (1)
- Christianity: From Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200-1650) (1)
- Narratives of Nonviolence in the American Civil Rights Movement (1)
- Constitutional Law - The Structure of Government (1)
- Contagious: How Things Catch On (1)
- Care of Elders with Alzheimer's Disease (1)
- The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art (1)
- Programming Mobile Services for Android Handheld Systems (1)
- Animal Behaviour (1)
- From the Big Bang to Dark Energy (1)
- Configuring the World (1)
- Introduction to Data Science (1)
- Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society (1)
- The Law of the European Union (1)
- 21st Century American Foreign Policy (1)
- Éléments de Géomatique (1)
- History and Future of Higher Education (1)
- The Age of Jefferson (1)
- The Magna Carta and its Legacy (1)
- A New History for a New China, 1700-2000 (1)
- The New Nordic Diet (1)
- A la recherche du Grand Paris (1)
- What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1)
- Exercise Physiology: Understanding the Athlete Within (1)
- Physique générale - mécanique (1)
- Subsistence Marketplaces (1)
- Practicing Tolerance in a Religious Society (1)
- Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life (1)
- Andy Warhol (1)
- Web Intelligence and Big Data (1)
- Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics (1)
- Learning How to Learn (1)
- Imagining Other Earths (1)
- Vital Signs: Understanding What the Body Is Telling Us (1)
- Développement durable (1)
- Dinosaur Ecosystems (1)
- The Civil War and Reconstruction (1)
- Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance (1)
- Introducción a la genética y la evolución (1)
- Poetry in America: Whitman (1)
- Anthropology of Current World Issues (1)
- Escribir para Convencer (1)
- Découvrir le marketing (1)
- Créer et développer une startup technologique (1)
- Frontières en tous genres (1)
- Une introduction à la géographicité (1)
- Gestion et Politique de l'eau (1)
- Theater and Globalization (1)
- Handel’s Messiah and Baroque Oratorio (1)
- Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1)
- From Goddard to Apollo: The History of Rockets (1)
- Miracles of Human Language (1)
- Human Origins (1)
- The Computing Technology Inside Your Smartphone (1)
- Intellectual Humility (1)
- Introduction to Italian Opera (1)
- Magic in the Middle Ages (1)
- Making Sense of News (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (1)
- Mobilité et urbanisme (1)
- Moral Foundations of Politics (1)
- Mountains 101 (1)
- The Biology of Music (1)
- Oriental Beliefs: Between Reason and Traditions (1)
- In the Night Sky: Orion (1)
- Visualizing Postwar Tokyo (1)
- The Renaissance and Baroque City (1)
- The Rise of China (1)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (1)
- Социокультурные аспекты социальной робототехники (1)
- Science of Exercise (1)
- El Mediterráneo del Renacimiento a la Ilustración (1)
- Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1)
- The World of the String Quartet (1)
- Switzerland in Europe (1)
- The Talmud: A Methodological Introduction (1)
- William Wordsworth: Poetry, People and Place (1)
- Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis (1)
- The World of Wine (1)
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:




Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:
Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
The Molecular Clock
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on February 10, 2014 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
macaques, species, 17, gorillas, phylogeny, homenoids, globin, assumption, Sivapithecus, function, genetically, fossil, GULOP, hemoglobin, Bailey, cladogram, amino, Pauling
phylogeny [figh-LAH-jin-nee]
understanding of the relationship between
the relationship between species is a fundamental aspect of how evolution happened
when we add genetics to phylogeny, it gets complicated and involves math
how we use phylogeny to understand when certain species shared common ancestors with each other
humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans
four species of living
macaques
not a part of the group that includes the other homenoids
shows clades, or branches of an ancestral tree
today we use cladograms to understand the study of biology
allows you to understand the relationships between organism
genetics
genetics by and large reflect the of the groups
humans are most similar to chimpanzees
humans and chimps are next most genetically similar to
we're more distantly related in genetics to
1962 Linus and student Emil Zuckerkandl
researched which acids there were in a protein hemoglobin in different kinds of organisms
seemed to show that the number of differences in the amino acid sequences seemed to reflect the time that those organisms shared a common ancestor according to the fossil record
e.g. humans and apes are 1 amino acid different, yet humans and horses are amino acids different
proposed the theory "the molecular clock"
differences in amino acids in are accumulating at a regular rate over time
if this were true, we could determine how long two species shared a common ancestor as a separate way than using the fossil record
i.e. we could look at how different they are and determine that they shared a common ancestor beginning at a certain time in the past
1992: research, Wendy
studying a part of the DNA called the psi-eta-globin
a part of the genome which is near the betaglobin gene which is part of hemoglobin
in some ancient organisms psi-eta-globin may have been functional but in all living primates, it has lost its function, it doesn't make any product anymore
why would something that has no exist and persist in primate genomes?
our genomes are full of genes that once worked in ancient organisms but stopped working at some point in our evolutionary history
some primates share a deactivation of the gene that creates vitamin C, some animals have no problem creating vitamin C, but primates have to get vitamin C from external sources
e.g. which still exists in the human genome
the further we move away from humans into other primates, the higher the difference of the gene sequence for psi-eta-
the percentage differences between the genes allows us to put age estimates on when the branchings occurred
e.g. humans and macaques in terms of their DNA are about twice as different than humans and orangatans are
this is what is referred to as the molecular clock
molecular clock is an that genes change at a constant rate but there may be mutations which cause them to converge on each other
to estimate times from these percentages, you have to know how often genetic changes happen, to further increase accuracy, you have to root this to the record
e.g. [shee-vah-PITH-i-kuss] is a genus of extinct primates that may have been the ancestor to modern orangutans, fossil record indicates that it lived about 12 million years ago
Vocabulary:
pseudogene, n. a non-working gene, or gene that once worked in ancient organisms but stopped working at some point in our evolutionary history, e.g. psi-eta-globin which still exists in the DNA of all primates but not longer produces a product ⇒ "In the discussions of genetic diseases in humans, pseudogene mediated gene conversion that introduce pathogenic mutations into functional genes is a well known mechanism of mutation." |
phylogenetics, n. The study of evolutionary relationships among groups of organisms, which are discovered through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices. Evolution is a process whereby populations are altered over time and may split into separate branches, hybridize together, or terminate by extinction. The evolutionary branching process may be depicted as a phylogenetic tree, and the place of each of the various organisms on the tree is based on a hypothesis about the sequence in which evolutionary branching events occurred. ⇒ "Molecular phylogenetics is the branch of phylogeny that analyses hereditary molecular differences, mainly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships." |
clade, n. group consisting of an ancestor and all its descendants, a single branch on ancestrial tree, many familiar groups, rodents and insects for example, are clades; others, like lizards and monkeys, are not (lizards excludes snakes, monkeys excludes apes and humans) ⇒ "The term "clade" was introduced in 1958 by Julian Huxley after having been coined by Lucien Cuénot in 1940." |
cladistics, n. an approach to biological classification in which organisms are grouped together based on whether or not they have one or more shared unique characteristics that come from the group's last common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors ⇒ "A sister group or sister taxon is a systematic term from cladistics denoting the closest relatives of a group in a phylogenetic tree." |
People:
![]() |
######################### (1901-1994) American biochemist who received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize
|
Spelling Corrections:
ancestrial ⇒ ancestral
Flashcards:
genus of extinct primates that may have been the ancestor to modern orangutans, lived about 12 million years ago
Sivapithecus [shee-vah-PITH-i-kuss]