Gorilla Genome Sequenced!

The gorilla genome has been sequenced and yields some interesting insights on human evolution. The research is reported in Nature. The article is open access. Here is the abstract: Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly [...]

The Genetics of Stay at Home Vs “Exploratory” Butterflies

Science Daily has a fascinating bit on butterflies called Butterflies That Explore and Colonize New Habitats Are Genetically Different from Cautious Cousins.This extended quote from the press release is fascinating: In the new study, another gene variant also stood out as an important indicator of butterfly flight ability. New-population females were more often missing a [...]

Orangutan Genetics: Begging for an Article

There are a couple of interesting articles on Orangutan genteics out. The first, published in Nature (and is open acess), announces the sequencing of the Orangutan genome. Results are kind of interesting. From Science Daily (I haven’t had a chance to read the Nature article yet): However, in a surprising discovery, the researchers found that [...]

King Tutankhamun’s Family and Genetics

Back in February of 2010 I blogged about a research paper on Tutankhamun. In that post I focused on the paleopathological findings of the Hawass et al article and didn’t really mention the genetic research and resulting identification of Tutankhamun’s family. Recently this second aspect of the Hawass et al study have bubbled to the [...]

Ancient DNA From Homo floresiensis: Redux

Extracting DNA from Homo floresiensis has been tried in the past with no luck. Nature News reports on a new attempt to obtain DNA from a Homo floresiensis molar. What struck me is interesting from the story is this bit:

Begging for an article, again…sigh

Can someone send me a copy of the paper below? New Genes in Drosophila Quickly Become Essential Sidi Chen, Yong E. Zhang and Manyuan Long Science 17 December 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6011 pp. 1682-1685 DOI: 10.1126/science.1196380 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6011/1682.abstract My email address is in the about tab

Body Mass and Genetics

This is really interesting. It concerns a study in Science Translational Medicine that looked at DNA methylation and body mass. From Science Daily:

The Independent Origins of Blood/Oxygen Transport Mechanisms

This is pretty cool. Science Daily PhysOrg mentions research in PNAS An extended excerpt from Science Daily PhysOrg:

The Genetics of the Mouse Hypothalamus

This is really interesting! From Science Daily: The team’s first challenge was to dissect away, at the very start of neural development, the part of the mouse brain which develops into the hypothalamus, and then cut tiny slices of this region for use in microarray analysis, a technology that reveals multiple gene activity. By analyzing [...]

Is Genetics and Archaeology a Replay of Genes vs Morphology?

I’m a bit under the weather with some kind of icky cold/sinus thing so I haven’t been writing much and when I do feel up to it I will have a lot to write about. I couldn’t pass up the chance to mention this post on genetics and archaeology by Hawks. It is very interesting…

Margaret Mead Vindicated, Chimpanzee Culture, And Ancient DNA

Colorado Daily.Com has an interesting article on the work of Paul Shankman on the Mead/Freeman controversy. Shankman was able to look through Freeman’s archival records. Some interesting things stand out: He revealed that Freeman “cherry picked” evidence that supported his thesis and ignored evidence that contradicted it. Mead’s task in Samoa was to test the [...]

The Genomics and Phylogenetics of Leprosy

Nature Genetics has an interesting research paper on leprosy. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the PhysOrg.Com summary is fascinating:

Vestigial Organs and Relaxed Selection

On my view of descent with modification, the origin of rudimentary organs is simple. We have plenty of cases of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions,—as the stump of a tail in tailless breeds,—the vestige of an ear in earless breeds,—the reappearance of minute dangling horns in hornless breeds of cattle, more especially, according to [...]

Svante Pääbo on Religion

From Edge:

Interesting Evolutionary Research

There are are couple of interesting pieces of research in the news. The first concerns tail shedding in island lizards. PhysOrg has the story: