DNA research shows smart people really do wear glasses.
As somebody who only recently started wearing glasses only sometimes, I shouldn’t really celebrate this, but – The Guardian has Scottish research that shows a […]
genetics
Mystery DNA has something to do with our brains.
Scientific American brings us a baby step closer to understanding what a bunch of strange DNA – stuff that doesn’t directly shape our cells – […]
500-year-old teeth reveal an unimaginably deadly epidemic.
Popular Science checks the dental records to get to the cause of a mysterious sickness that killed up to 15 million people in only three […]
Ancient Americans came all at once – or so a baby’s DNA suggests.
Science looks at the mystery of when the first Americans arrived over the land bridge of Beringia, and have found some interesting clues in an […]
Navajo nation might just let geneticists study them after all.
Nature has more on Navajo leaders – in charge of the second-largest Native American group in the U.S. – possibly ending 15 years of forbidding […]
GMO wheat is gluten free. (Hard choices, right?)
New Scientist reports with hope for celiac-disease sufferers on a new breed of wheat that’s genetically modified not to produce inflammation-causing gluten: Gluten is the […]
Gene editing brings pig-to-human organ transplants one step closer.
Science magazine mulls over new research showing how CRISPR gene editing successfully got rid of PERVs – porcine endogenous retroviruses – and made it that […]
We’ve edited the genes of human embryos now.
Nature has the story of an international team led by Portland-based reproductive biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who used CRISPR gene-editing to erase a potentially fatal heart […]
Geneticists record a short film on DNA. No, literally ON the DNA.
Popular Science explains what it takes to encode a short movie using CRISPR gene-editing technology: Using the gene editing technique CRISPR, they encoded a series […]
Recreating deadly diseases with mail-order DNA: Here’s how.
Science reports on a group of researchers who recreated an extinct cousin of smallpox – one of the deadliest and most-weaponized diseases on Earth – […]
Very old oak; pretty young genes.
Nature examines a tree that was alive in the time of Napoleon, yet has DNA that’s remarkably free of the usual damage of aging: Each […]
Birds’ songs are in their genes.
Popular Science is trying to figure out if you can teach a robin to sing like a swallow, or a warbler to tweet like a […]
Which came first, the sponge or the jelly? (We might have an answer.)
Nature tries to solve a nearly intractable chicken-and-egg problem for evolutionary biologists. Which is the oldest kind of animal, a sponge or a comb jelly? […]
We might have found some more archaic Denisovan people in China.
Science looks at skulls from Eastern China that appear to be the remains of the little-known Denisovan prehistoric people: Since their discovery in 2010, the […]
Science Art: Plate 20. – Skeletons of the cross between the English bulldog and bassethound showing contrast in leg length…, 1941
My old dog was a basset. And now there’s a bulldog in my house. I’m not sure how dogs happen, but they do. This is […]