Genetics & Molecular Biology
Basic principles of biology rather than women’s newfound economic independence can explain why fewer of them are getting married and having children, and why the trend may only be temporary, says a Queen’s researcher.
“Only in recent times have women acquired significant control over their own fertility, and many are preferring not to be saddled with the burden of raising children,” says Lonnie Aarssen, a Biology professor who specializes in reproductive ecology. The question is whether this is just a result of economic factors and socio-cultural conditioning, as most analysts claim, or…
Evolution carries out an incredibly tricky balancing act: the genetic program of a species has to be resistant to small changes, yet also susceptible to the adaptive remodeling of natural selection. The human genome is so robust that over 6 billion variations give rise to viable organisms that have successfully traversed the complex developmental program that produces a live human infant from a single cell. Yet the human genome is the product of major evolutionary innovation, even over the relatively short period since the human and chimp lineages diverged. How can genomes be robust and…
Androstenone is a derivative of testosterone that is a potent ingredient in male body odor. To some it smells like stale urine, others find it sweet and pleasant. Some can't smell it at all.
Androstenone is used by some mammals to convey social and sexual information so if you know a girl who doesn't like the way you smell, it may be genetic variations in a single odorant receptor called OR7D4 - don't take it personally, it's in her genes.
Researchers at Rockefeller University presented nearly 400 participants with 66 odors at two different concentrations and asked them to rate the…
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that a single gene might control whether or not individuals tend to pile on fat, a discovery that may point to new ways to fight obesity and diabetes.
“From worms to mammals, this gene controls fat formation,” said Dr. Jonathan Graff, associate professor of developmental biology and internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of a study appearing in the Sept. 5 issue of Cell Metabolism. “It could explain why so many people struggle to lose weight and suggests an entirely new direction for developing medical treatments that…
It's done - the independent sequence and assembly of the six billion base pairs from the genome of one person, Craig Venter of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), has been completed.
Two general versions of the human genome currently exist but those were a melding of DNA from various people. In the case of one version from Celera Genomics, it was a consensus assembly from five individuals, while a government-funded version was a haploid genome based on sequencing from a limited number of individuals.
It seems both versions greatly underestimated human genetic diversity.
In process since…
A team of scientists led by young Croatian evolutionary geneticist Tomislav Domazet-Lošo from Ruder Boškovic Institute (RBI) in Zagreb, Croatia, developed a novel methodological approach in evolutionary studies.
Using the method they named 'genomic phylostratigraphy', its authors shed new and unexpected light on some of the long standing macroevolutionary issues, which have been puzzling evolutionary biologists since Darwin.
The only direct method of research in evolutionary history involves analyzing the fossil remains of once living organisms, excavated in various localities throughout of…
The organs that produce sperm also may make it easier for mutations to pass to offspring, USC biologists say. The testes in humans may act as mutation multipliers that raise the odds of passing improved DNA to offspring – but that can also backfire by increasing the frequency of certain diseases.
The new theory is part of a study, appearing in PLOS Biology, that tries to explain the puzzlingly high frequency of Apert syndrome, a genetic cranial deformity found in approximately one out of every 70,000 newborns.
The study’s authors suggest that natural selection may favor “germline” cells –…
A team has examined over 300,000 genetic markers in thousands of asthmatic children and compared their data with those of healthy controls. The newly found gene, ORMDL3, is a promising object of research: it could help to improve the prevention and diagnosis of asthma, and possibly to develop a new therapy.
The scientists used the fact that the genetic material of different individuals shows differences. One type of DNA variants is called SNPs, short for “Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms”. They can be compared and statistically analysed.
To a hitherto unprecedented extent, in the present case…
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Scientists have discovered a key mechanism involved in the correct separation of chromosomes during the formation of eggs and sperm.
The research shows that BubR1 - a gene recently shown to affect cell division – maintains the cohesion of paired chromosomes (until their time to divide) during the production of reproductive cells. Because BubR1 mutations can result in cells with abnormal numbers of chromosomes, the research has potential implications for human disorders resulting from loss or gain of chromosomes such as Down Syndrome, a disease caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.…
After being encased in Antarctic ice for 8 million years, ancient microbes thawed by a team of researchers revved up their metabolic engines again and began making proteins and replicating. These are the oldest organisms ever brought back to life after a deep freeze.
The research team, a group primarily from Rutgers, looked at the microbial population in some of the oldest ice known on earth, obtained from Antarctica’s Beacon Valley. Using microscopy, the researchers could see that these samples had a variety of bacteria encased inside. But microscopy can only tell you so much; to learn…