Research 1

Research 1: 10 Examples of Natural Selection

Source:
10 Examples of Natural Selection
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-examples-natural-selection.htm

My Topic:
Humans are still evolving.

What I hope to learn from this source:
I want to find either facts that might help me develop my topic, or new sources that will help refine my topic. I want to look for something interesting.

Notes:

1.     Nylon eating bacteria: What a surprise! I never heard of any organism that eats nylon. Even nylon is a man-made fabric. The bacterium Pseudomonas can metabolize nylon due to its special enzyme. However, other bacteria also evolved to metabolize nylon when they were put in places where they can only eat nylon. As I can see from this example, organism can adapt any foods that environment gives.

2.     Humans: Humans are still experiencing evolution. The fact that we are the only mammal that can tolerate lactose though we grow up is a result of evolution. Also gene mutation made human being stronger to endure diseases like malaria.

3.     History of theory of evolution: Darwin is called as ‘Father of theory of evolution’. But Darwin is not the first one who thought of evolution. (Greek philosopher Anaximander, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck)

4.     Natural selection: It does not make new species but can improve species’ survival by helping them to adapt changed environment.   

Final Thoughts:

I’ll use the information about nylon eating bacteria in introduction because it is interesting enough to grab readers’ attention.(In my opinion) I should have to look for more information related with recent human evolution. Information I found (about lactose and malaria) is good but not sufficient. I would like to use history of theory of evolution and information about natural selection in narration part as it can give good information to people. Also they are quite interesting.