The Notch signaling pathway is a golden oldie of genetics in two ways.

Consider these not-so-random samples from the animal world: a cockroach, a zebrafish, a mouse. What do these creatures have in common? Left to right: American cockroach (Periplaneta americana), zebrafish (Danio rerio), house mouse (Mus musculus). Cockroach image from Wikimedia Commons, zebrafish and mouse from Wellcome Images. Well, they're all animals and that means they're all eukaryotes, for example. They all have DNA-based genomes.

Recently I was reading a superb review article [doi] on the subject of a famous and important cellular signaling pathway called the Notch pathway.

Okay, that'll probably be the last UD moderation joke, because my irresistible charm has had its predictable (non-random) effect. I have a nice discussion going with two regulars at Uncommon Descent, StephenB and the original poster, Thomas Cudworth. I'll post my contribution below as usual, and you can read the rest of the conversation in the growing thread at Uncommon Descent.

Charles Darwin collected all sorts of cool stuff (like a vampire bat, caught while feeding on his horse) on his journey aboard the Beagle, and it has to be said that he understood little of it until after he got back. The finches that bear his name were identified as such by someone else, and his own bird collections from the Galapagos were nearly worthless due to the fact that he hadn't bothered to label specimens as to their place of origin.

The wing of a bat is an amazing thing. It's not just a wing; it's clearly a modified mammalian limb. A bat looks like a lot like a rodent with really long, webbed fingers on elongated arms. Image from Animal Diversity Web at the University of Michigan.

We interrupt this series on "junk DNA" and rampant folk science to bring you a months-overdue Journal Club. I wonder how many of my readers remember this little tidbit of American genius: I remember some very funny spoofs, mostly on T-shirts. (Back then, I think the Internet was still a toy for geeks at the NCSA.) "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. This is your brain on drugs with a side of bacon.

Evolutionary science is so much bigger, so much deeper, so much more interesting than its opponents (understandably) will admit. It's more complicated than Michael Behe or Bill Dembski let on, and yet it's not that hard to follow, for those who are willing to try. The best papers by evolutionary biologists are endlessly fascinating and scientifically superb, and reading them is stimulating and fun.

The jaw-dropping diversity of life begs for explanation, but at the same time it defies description, so much so that it has inspired hyperbole, even hyperbole of the finest variety.