Our genes may not be the basis for human individuality, according to new studies in Science and Nature. The key may actually lie in the sequences that surround and control our genes. The interaction…

Information processing and entropy management - that's what organisms are about, right? Information and entropy are terms that get people excited, and yet it's extremely difficult to integrate…

Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance on Entropy and the Meaning of Life: We know that entropy increases as the universe evolves. But why, on the road from the simple and low-entropy early universe to the…

In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute suggest that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or…

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created a molecular image of a system that moves electrons between proteins in cells. The achievement is a breakthrough for biology and could provide…

Physicians have long recognized that pinpointing specific causes of disease in individual patients enables therapies that are the most likely to confer benefit with the fewest adverse effects. We…

Some chickens appear to be male on one side of the body and female on the other, and researchers writing in Nature this week say they know why. It was previously thought that sex chromosomes in…

Sonic hedgehog, a gene that plays a crucial rule in the positioning and growth of limbs, fingers and toes, has been found in the ectoderm - the cell layer that gives rise to the skin - in the embryos…

A team of Georgia Institute of Technology scientists are reporting that molecules they term "unselfish" may have midwifed the birth of life's original (sometimes called "selfish") genes. The Georgia…

This is the second in a present series, highlighting a particular incidence of  discrimination here and now, and those new to this may consider my intent to do some wider campaigning around this…