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Tails are useful in many ways, but — unlike these vervet monkeys pictured in Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda — humans' closest primate relatives lost the appendages about 25 million years ago. (Photo credit: imageBROKER/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Humans have many wonderful qualities, but we lack something that’s a common feature among most animals with backbones: a tail. Exactly why that is has been something of a mystery. Tails are useful for balance, propulsion, communication and defense against biting insects. However, humans and our closest primate relatives — the great apes — said farewell to tails about 25...

They used to live in caves, hunt their food and were generally tougher than modern-day humans. But a new study finds if you have Neanderthal genes, you are twice as likely to develop a life-threatening form of Covid. DNA from the species that went extinct around 40,000 years ago is associated with autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes and prostate cancer. A team of Italian researchers found people with three Neanderthal gene variations were twice as likely to have severe pneumonia and three times as likely to be hospitalized with a ventilator after contracting the virus. While the findings were part...

The First Sequencing of the Bivalent vaccines is now available for public consumption. WARNING- There are contaminating Expression vectors in the vaccines that contain antibiotic resistance genes. This might explain the prolonged expression of spike protein in many studies snip...."What happens if we inject billions of Antibiotic resistance genes into billions of people?"

When Chastity Murry had her first psychotic break, she went into her bathroom and downed a whole bottle of pills, hoping to die. Her teenage daughter had to perform CPR to save her life. Around that same time more than a decade ago, the man who would become her husband, Dante Murry, also lost touch with reality and considered suicide. Different illnesses led them down similar paths – bipolar disorder in her case and schizoaffective disorder in his – conditions long considered by many to be distinct and unrelated. But a growing body of research shows that bipolar disorder, schizophrenia...

In September 2015, Monica was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was already in the middle stage. Monica was an identical twin, and her 38-year-old sister Erika had also had regular mammograms and ultrasounds without ever detecting cancer. In Monica’s left breast, a tumor had grown to be the size of a tennis ball, and the cancer cells had spread to her lymph nodes.These twins share the same genes, so why did one develop cancer and not the other?We have always thought that it is the genes , our DNA, that determine everything about us. In fact, there is another decisive...

Actor Sean Penn is no champion of the conservative movement and there’s a good chance he never will be. But he does appear to agree with many of his political opposites when it comes to traditional gender roles. The “Mystic River” alum is unhappy with men becoming more feminine and wishes the trend would reverse. “I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized,” Penn told UK-based inews.co while promoting his new movie, “Flag Day.” “I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do...

Researchers have identified a version of a gene that doubles a person's risk of severe COVID-19 and doubles the risk of death from the disease for people under 60. The gene, LZTFL1, is involved in the regulation of lung cells in response to infection. When the risky version of the gene is present, cells lining the lungs seem to do less to protect themselves from infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The gene version that raises COVID-19 risk is present in 60 percent of people of South Asian ancestry, 15 percent of people of European ancestry, 2.4 percent of people with...

It has been over a year since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And perhaps the most important lesson is that we were completely unprepared to face the debilitating virus. This raises some scary thoughts. What if the threat wasn't COVID-19, but a gene-edited pathogen designed to turn us into zombies—ghost-like, agitated creatures with little awareness of our surroundings? With recent advances in gene editing, it may be possible for bioterrorists to design viruses capable of altering our behavior, spreading such a disease and ultimately killing us. And chances are we still wouldn't be sufficiently prepared to...

Rockfish is on the menu around the Pacific Rim, for the most part with little regard for the fish's origin or which of the 137 species is on the plate—it's typically identified simply as rockfish or, incorrectly, as rock cod or red snapper. But this seemingly anonymous fish—among the longest-lived vertebrates on Earth—holds clues to the genes that determine lifespan and the pluses and minuses of living longer. In a study appearing this week in the journal Science, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, compare the genomes of nearly two-thirds of the known species of rockfish that inhabit coastal...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — When Sharif Tabebordbar was born in 1986, his father, Jafar, was 32 and already had symptoms of a muscle wasting disease. The mysterious illness would come to define Sharif’s life. Jafar Tabebordbar could walk when he was in his 30s but stumbled and often lost his balance. Then he lost his ability to drive. When he was 50, he could use his hands. Now he has to support one hand with another. No one could answer the question plaguing Sharif and his younger brother, Shayan: What was this disease? And would they develop it the way their...

"China building Bio Weapon that can target people based on race. China has been amassing a disturbing amount of genetic data from the rest of the world, and it's been doing it for something nightmarish." China’s Nightmarish New Bio Weapon Targets Race and Ethnicity (16 min video)

China building a Bio-Weapon that can target people based on race. China has been amassing a disturbing amount of genetic data from the rest of the world, and it's been doing it for something nightmarish.

This is potentially the most dangerous and dystopian development in genetic modification in history. “The researchers inserted the Magneto DNA sequence into the genome of a virus”. The DNA behavior is then triggered by magnetic fields or radio waves. ⁃ TN Editor Researchers in the United States have developed a new method for controlling the brain circuits associated with complex animal behaviours, using genetic engineering to create a magnetised protein that activates specific groups of nerve cells from a distance. Understanding how the brain generates behaviour is one of the ultimate goals of neuroscience – and one of its most...

LUBBOCK, Texas — For some COVID-19 patients, getting over their infection is just the beginning of the recovery. Over the last year, COVID “long haulers” have continued experiencing a variety of symptoms months after the virus clears. These include anything from skin problems, to shortness of breath, to losing the sense of taste or smell. Now, researchers say they may know why this is happening. A new study finds coronavirus actually causes long-term changes to an infected patient’s genes.Specifically, scientists reveal the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, creates long-lasting changes to human gene expression. These tiny spikes...

....Researchers from the GenOMICC consortium compared the 2,700 ICU patients’ genetic information with samples from healthy volunteers from other studies. They discovered key differences in these five genes: IFNAR2, TYK2, OAS1, DPP9, and CCR. They “partially explain why some people become severely sick with Covid-19, while others are not affected.” “Our findings reveal that critical illness in Covid-19 is related to at least two biological mechanisms: innate antiviral defenses, which are known to be important early in disease (IFNAR2 and OAS genes), and host-driven inflammatory lung injury, which is a key mechanism of late, life-threatening COVID-19 (DPP9, TYK2, and CCR2),”...

Dr Hugo Zeberg, assistant professor in the department of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, talks to Jason Goodyer about his research into Neanderthal genes and the impact they could have on COVID-19 patients. How much of the human genome has been inherited from Neanderthals?If you have roots from outside of Africa, then roughly 2 per cent of your DNA is Neanderthal. But if we put all these pieces together, we find more than half of the Neanderthal genome in modern humans. But it will differ between people: some carry some pieces, some carry other pieces. How do...

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten public health, scientists throughout the world have been working around the clock to develop effective treatments against COVID-19. CRISPR gene editing is one of the techniques researchers are using. During the Virtual Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), Tina Hesman Saey, Senior Writer and molecular biology reporter at Science News, spoke with Feng Zhang (ISEF 1998-1999, STS 2000), one of the pioneers of CRISPR technology, about CRISPR’s role in fighting COVID-19. Feng shared three main ways CRISPR is being used to fight COVID-19: As a diagnostic, CRISPR-based tests have been developed to...

[PHOTO:TELESUR] For years, I’ve worried and warned about the dangers posed by gene-editing technologies, such as CRISPR. In the words of one of its inventors, CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) makes the human genome “as malleable as a piece of literary prose at the mercy of an editor’s red pen.” At least, that’s the promise that has yet to materialize. In 2018, a Chinese scientist announced he’d used CRISPR to genetically modify human embryos. At the time, more “respectable” scientists denounced his actions as “unethical,” given how new the technology was and how little ethical oversight there was...

Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankind's complicated genetic ancestry. The study indicated that present-day West Africans trace a substantial proportion, some 2% to 19%, of their genetic ancestry to an extinct human species – what the researchers called a "ghost population." "We estimate interbreeding occurred approximately 43,000 years ago, with large intervals of uncertainty," said University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) human genetics and computer science professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the...

Scientists adding human brain genes to monkeys — it’s the kind of thing you’d see in a movie like Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But Chinese researchers have done just that, improving the short-term memories of the monkeys in a study published in March in the Chinese journal National Science Review. While some experts downplayed the effects as minor, concerns linger over where the research may lead. The goal of the work, led by geneticist Bing Su of Kunming Institute of Zoology, was to investigate how a gene linked to brain size, MCPH1, might contribute to the evolution...