<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/38559712-a765-4eb9-af1e-97bfb0b5d217/0C6F3C2C-64FB-4852-A97D-063D20156071/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07wed4.html?th&emc=th#" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07wed4.html?th&emc=th#" style="font-size: 11px;">www.nytimes.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07wed4.html?th&emc=th#"> until recently, scientists had never really tested the biological law — first proposed in 1905 — that evolution couldn’t run in reverse. No one expects whole organisms to mutate back into their evolutionary antecedents. But what about the proteins we’re made up of? Under the right circumstances, can they find their way back in time?</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07wed4.html?th&emc=th#"><P><A title="The Times’s article on the research" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/science/29evol.html?scp=2&sq=evolution&st=cse">The answer</A>, it turns out, is no.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07wed4.html?th&emc=th#"><P> A University of Oregon research team has tried, in essence, to return a protein — called a glucocorticoid receptor — to one of its ancestral states by reversing the mutations that produced the modern version of the receptor. They discovered that the mutations happened in two stages — two separate groups of mutations. The trouble, they report in <A title="The beginning of the article on Nature.com" href="http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090923/full/news.2009.940.html">the current issue of Nature</A>, was that each separate cluster of mutations produced a dead receptor, no matter which one was chosen first. In other words, there was no way the protein could select a preferable state that would lead it, in nature, toward its ancestral form. </P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/0C6F3C2C-64FB-4852-A97D-063D20156071/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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