Evolution - the case for ...

This month, guest speaker Dr. Peter Uetz will explain why he embraces evolution. Participants will have a chance to ask questions. In this context, evolution a distinct issue from the origin of life. The focus here is evolution, not the origin of life. In Peter's words: The main thrust of modern evolutionary research, as far as I see it, is concerned with 2 major questions: (1) how is all life related to each other, and therefore, how it evolved over time, and (2) what are the molecular mechanisms that guide the evolutionary process that has created that diversity. At the heart of modern evolutionary research is genome sequencing and the mechanistic exploration of its functional consequences, e.g. how do you explain novel properties or structures? Which genomic changes underly these changes? How can we reconstruct the evolutionary tree of life using genome (or DNA) sequences?