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.
05 Wednesday Sep 2012
Tags
biology, Denisova hominin, Denisovan, DNA, Evolutionary Anthropology, Genome, Homo floresiensis, Human, Neandertal, Neanderthal, Popular science, science
Around 60,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa, the cradle of our species. As we spread across the face of the Earth, we discovered that we weren’t the first or the only humans to make that sojourn. From Central Asia to Europe, we met our distant cousins the Neanderthals, descendants of a 500,000 year old migration; further east were the Denisovans, ranging from Sibera to Southeast Asia. Although these other humans died out around 30,000 years ago, some comfort can be found in the knowledge that a part of them lives on in us. Genetic evidence uncovered in the past few years suggests that our migrating ancestors may have mated with these other humans during their encounters. Not everyone was convinced, though, launching an ongoing debate about whether the genetic similarity might be due to common ancestry rather than inbreeding. Continue reading
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
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.
Inspiring Science 