14 Friday Sep 2012
Tags
Hominidae, Human, Mitochondrial DNA, Mitochondrial Eve, Mutation rate, Popular science, Radiocarbon dating, science
Most of the interesting recent events in human evolution probably happened longer ago than we had thought, according to Aylwyn Scally and Richard Durbin of the Sanger Institute. In an opinion piece published in Nature Review Genetics this week, they re-examine the story of how humans left Africa, taking into account new data from several recent whole-genome studies.
27 Sunday May 2012
Tags
biology, digestion, DNA, Gene expression, GMO, Health, horizontal transfer, Human, MicroRNA, Mouse, nutrition, Popular science, RNA, science
In an exciting discovery reported last year, a team of Chinese researchers found that some of the genetic material in our food might survive digestion and go on to regulate our genes and affect our physiology. This new mechanism for genetic interactions between very different species raises interesting evolutionary questions and will probably have implications for the study of health and nutrition, but it’s important to understand what the study was actually about, particularly since this will likely affect the debate around GMO foods. Continue reading
02 Monday Apr 2012
Tags
Agriculture, biology, breeding, Chromosome, farming, Heterosis, hybrid, hybrid vigor, Meiosis, Popular science, science, Seed
In a really neat piece of work based around a remarkably simple bit of engineering and some textbook genetics, a team of scientists has found a way to regenerate a plant’s parents through breeding — a technique they call “reverse breeding”. This clever bit of research, which is described in a paper appearing in Nature Genetics, should be applicable to a wide range of crop species, opening up the possibility of significant advances in crop improvement and breeding programmes.
12 Monday Mar 2012
Tags
animals, biology, Capsaicin, Human, Melanocortin 1 receptor, Pain, Popular science, Red hair, redhead, Redheads, science, science and society, Science communication
I’ve recently come across some press coverage reporting research by Danish scientists which has shown that “redheads feel pain differently than the rest of us”. I read the paper and thought it would be nice to write something short about it here, both for the change of tone and to give my own perspective on it.
08 Wednesday Feb 2012
Tags
ancestry, animals, biology, Education, evolution, Human, Mitochondrial DNA, Mitochondrial Eve, out of Africa, Popular science, science, Y-chromosomal Adam
In a paper published in 1987 in the leading science journal Nature, researchers claimed to have identified a female from whom all humans alive today are descended, dubbed “mitochondrial Eve”; nearly ten years later, another group of scientists published findings identifying her male counterpart, “Y-chromosomal Adam”. The choice of names, though evocative, was unfortunate and uninformative, since the use of “Adam” and “Eve” has led to several major misunderstandings about these two ancient humans. In this post, I’ll try to clear up some of these misunderstandings by explaining what these terms actually mean and how scientists have gone about trying to identify our most recent common male and female ancestors.
31 Tuesday Jan 2012
Tags
biology, DNA, Escherichia coli, Gene expression, genetic regulation, Mutation, Popular science, science, shape
A recent paper describes how the mutation of a single gene is sufficient to turn a harmless bacterium found in our gut into an invasive pathogen. Taken alone, this isn’t terribly surprising; many genes regulate the expression of other genes and some (“master” genes) act as switches that control a whole host of other genes. The gene mutated in this study isn’t one of these “master” genes, though; it’s a structural gene and there’s a much more intriguing reason for its broad impact on the bacterium.
Inspiring Science 
You must be logged in to post a comment.