The Evolution of Academic Knowledge

The complete works of Charles Darwin are now online. This is certainly an important moment in the evolution of academic knowledge, since it points the way to a future where everything will be accessible in this way - call it the Googleisation of academia.

A pity, though, that the terms of use are so restrictive: not a CC licence in sight. Obviously we're still at the Neanderthal stage as far as copyright evolution is concerned.

First Catch Your Neanderthal

This stuff is getting too easy.

First, find some ancient remains - Croatian Neanderthal bones are great. Next, sequence lots - at least 20 times coverage. Don't worry if all you're getting are tiny fragments with around 100 DNA letters, and the signal is vastly swamped by bacterial noise. Just bung the results into a computer, and tell it (a) to cancel out all bacterial genome sequences (b) to join up all the rest. Result: one Neanderthal genome.

There's just one problem:

If the Neanderthal genome were fully recovered, it might in principle be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. There would, however, be great technical and ethical barriers to any such venture.

Understatement of the Year, Number 369.