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Scientists have traced the origin of the 'speed gene' in Thoroughbred racehorses back to a single British mare that lived in the United Kingdom around 300 years ago, according to findings published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The origin of the 'speed gene' (C type myostatin gene variant) was revealed by analysing DNA from hundreds of horses, including DNA extracted from the skeletal remains of 12 celebrated Thoroughbred stallions born between 1764 and 1930. "Changes in racing since the foundation of the Thoroughbred have shaped the distribution of 'speed gene' types over time and in different racing regions,"...

Interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals may have given Europeans and Asians resistance to northern diseases that their African ancestors didn't have. Peter Parham, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford, recently presented evidence to the Royal Society in London that Europeans gained many of the genes for human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) from neanderthals. The antigens helped them adapt to diseases in the north much more quickly than would have otherwise occurred. Comparisons of the human and Neanderthal genomes were conducted by Parham to locate similarities and differences in the DNA of modern human populations and Neanderthals. Parham found that modern...

First direct whole-genome measure of human mutation predicts 60 new mutations in each of usEach one of us receives approximately 60 new mutations in our genome from our parents. This striking value is reported in the first-ever direct measure of new mutations coming from mother and father in whole human genomes published today. For the first time, researchers have been able to answer the questions: how many new mutations does a child have and did most of them come from mum or dad? The researchers measured directly the numbers of mutations in two families, using whole genome sequences from the...

The Neolithic is a key period in the history of the European settlement. Although archaeological and present-day genetic data suggest several hypotheses regarding the human migration patterns at this period, validation of these hypotheses with the use of ancient genetic data has been limited. In this context, we studied DNA extracted from 53 individuals buried in a necropolis used by a French local community 5,000 y ago. The relatively good DNA preservation of the samples allowed us to obtain autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and/or mtDNA data for 29 of the 53 samples studied. From these datasets, we established close parental relationships within...

Researchers hope to control a group of mitochondrial proteins that attack and damage other functional cell parts, which leads to age-related diseases Thomas Nyström, study leader and a researcher in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Gothenburg, and a team of researchers, have discovered that a group of mitochondrial proteins may be responsible for age-related diseases. Scientists have theorized that the mitochondria, which are the power stations of cells, are responsible for human aging. This theory comes from the fact that mitochondria not only produce the body's energy, but also create harmful byproducts. These byproducts...

Could blood group anomaly explain Tudor king's reproductive problems and tyrannical behavior?DALLAS (SMU) – Blood group incompatibility between Henry VIII and his wives could have driven the Tudor king's reproductive woes, and a genetic condition related to his suspected blood group could also explain Henry's dramatic mid-life transformation into a physically and mentally-impaired tyrant who executed two of his wives. Research conducted by bioarchaeologist Catrina Banks Whitley while she was a graduate student at SMU (Southern Methodist University) and anthropologist Kyra Kramer shows that the numerous miscarriages suffered by Henry's wives could be explained if the king's blood carried the...

By Jasper Copping Last Updated: 1:29am BST 16/09/2007 He was a young man, like so many others, who fell on the battlefield at Passchendaele. Aged just 29, Private Jack Hunter died in the arms of his younger brother, Jim, who buried him there, on the front line, in a shallow grave. Jack Hunter, who died at Passchendaele, with his brother Jim Jack Hunter, who died in the first world war, with his brother Jim Once the guns had fallen silent, Jim returned to look for his brother's body, but the ground had been chewed up by artillery and he could...

The archaeology of North Africa remains enigmatic, with questions of population continuity versus discontinuity taking centre-stage. Debates have focused on population transitions between the bearers of the Middle Palaeolithic Aterian industry and the later Upper Palaeolithic populations of the Maghreb, as well as between the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Results: Improved resolution of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup U6 phylogeny, by the screening of 39 new complete sequences, has enabled us to infer a signal of moderate population expansion using Bayesian coalescent methods. To ascertain the time for this expansion, we applied both a mutation rate accounting for purifying selection...

'Genetic testing of villagers in a remote part of China has shown that nearly two thirds of their DNA is of Caucasian origin, lending support to the theory that they may be descended from a 'lost legion' of Roman soldiers.'

Roman descendants found in China? By Richard Spencer in Liqian, north-west China Last Updated: 1:33am GMT 02/02/2007 Sound and vision: Richard Spencer visits the village of Liqian, China(Click at site) Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity. Villager Cai Junnian with his green eyes and ruddy complexion Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from...

This idea was first proposed by Homer Hasenphlug Dubs, an Oxford University professor of Chinese history, who speculated in 1955 that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 B.C. made their way east to Uzbekistan to enlist with Jzh Jzh against the Han. Chinese accounts of the battle, in which Jzh Jzh was decapitated and his army defeated, note unusual military formations and the use of wooden fortifications foreign to the nomadic Huns. Dubs postulated that after the battle the Chinese employed the Roman mercenaries as border...

Roman legion founded Chinese city Survivors of Crassus's routed army said to have built town (ANSA) - Florence, July 25 - Roman soldiers who disappeared after a famous defeat founded a city in eastern China, archaeologists say . The phantom legion was part of the defeated forces of Marcus Licinius Crassus, according to the current edition of the Italian magazine Archeologia Viva . The famously wealthy Crassus needed glory to rival the exploits of the two men with whom he ruled Rome as the First Triumvirate, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar . Crassus decided to bring down the Parthian...

Experts at the newly established Italian Studies Center at Lanzhou University in Gansu province are looking into the possibility that some European-looking Chinese in Northwest China are the descendants of a lost army from the Roman Empire. They will conduct excavations on a section of the Silk Road, a 7,000-kilometer trade route that linked Asia and Europe more than 2,000 years ago, to see if a legion of Roman soldiers settled in China, said Yuan Honggeng, head of the center, reports China Daily... Before Marco Polo's travels to China in the 13th century, the only known contact between the two...

Cai Junnian's green eyes give a hint he may be a descendant of Roman mercenaries who allegedly fought the Han Chinese 2,000 years ago Genetic testing of villagers in a remote part of China has shown that nearly two thirds of their DNA is of Caucasian origin, lending support to the theory that they may be descended from a 'lost legion' of Roman soldiers. Tests found that the DNA of some villagers in Liqian, on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in north-western China, was 56 per cent Caucasian in origin. Many of the villagers have blue or green...

n the November issue, we looked at how scientists are using DNA analysis to track down endangered species that are being hunted for food. Here, Dave Arnold talks about why some people prefer exotic meats. For the most part, Americans are obsessed with tenderness, and favor mild-flavored meat. We eat a fairly small number of animals, almost all of them slaughtered young, when their meat is at its least flavorful. Fortunately, some of us are starting to realize that meat can be much more interesting. As the food revolution continues to gain traction, our ancestral lust for robust, unusual meats...

As in cities today, the earliest towns helped expose their inhabitants to inordinate opportunities for infection -- and today their descendants are stronger for it, a new study says. "If cities increase the amount of disease people are exposed to, shouldn't they also, over time, make them natural places for disease resistance to evolve?" asked study co-author Mark Thomas, a biologist at University College London... study co-author Ian Barnes, a molecular paleobiologist at University College London, screened DNA samples from 17 groups long associated with particular regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa -- for example Anatolian Turks and the southern...

Back in 2004, when academics unearthed skeletons found at a house in the ancient Roman town that was covered in ashes in 79 AD, they thought it belonged to an extinct breed of horse... What happened really was that there seems to have been a mix-up in the lab, which led to horse DNA being combined with donkey DNA, creating an artificial hybrid that actually never existed. Six years ago, the skeletons of equids having belonged to a rich Roman household in Pompeii were analyzed. There were found in the stables of a probably wealthy politician, and all five of...

The extinct Passenger Pigeon, once the most numerous bird species in the world, has had its closest living relatives identified by DNA extracted from museum specimens.The Passenger Pigeon was a forest nomad, breeding in vast colonies and following sporadic crops of acorns and chestnuts around the dense deciduous forests of the eastern and central United States. the forests were once so vast that they could support tens of millions of the birds, which were known to form flocks so huge that they darkened the sky when dispersing. This made them easy prey for hunters' guns, and the greed and over-exploitation...

The gourd, originally used to store gunpowder, was extensively decorated on the outside with a flame tool. Burned into its surface is the text: "Maximilien Bourdaloue on January 21st, dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his beheading. It is described in contemporaneous accounts that there was a lot of blood in the scaffold after the beheading and that, in fact, many people went there to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood," Carles Lalueza-Fox, lead author of the study and a researcher at Spain's Institute of Evolutionary Biology, told Discovery News. The handkerchief is now missing from...

William Holland, a genealogical researcher living in Atlanta, has seen some pretty strange twists in his family tree. Several years ago, he found out that his great-grandfather was a black slave ... who wound up serving as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. But this year Holland's research resulted in something even stranger. Thanks to DNA testing, Holland is being welcomed as a long-lost relative by a ruling family of the West African nation of Cameroon... Holland plugged his genetic markers into a database provided by the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which draws upon GeneTree results as well as...

The most robust statistical examination to date of our species' genetic links to "mitochondrial Eve" -- the maternal ancestor of all living humans -- confirms that she lived about 200,000 years ago. The Rice University study was based on a side-by-side comparison of 10 human genetic models that each aim to determine when Eve lived using a very different set of assumptions about the way humans migrated, expanded and spread across Earth... "Our findings underscore the importance of taking into account the random nature of population processes like growth and extinction," said study co-author Marek Kimmel, professor of statistics at...

The cave bear started to become extinct in Europe 24,000 years ago, but until now the cause was unknown. An international team of scientists has analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 17 new fossil samples, and compared these with the modern brown bear. The results show that the decline of the cave bear started 50,000 years ago, and was caused more by human expansion than by climate change. "The decline in the genetic diversity of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) began around 50,000 years ago, much earlier than previously suggested, at a time when no major climate change was taking place,...

Questions have focused on the analytic platform used to find about 150 genetic variations linked to longevity Just like the fountain of youth, a study that purported to find genetic secrets to longevity may be a myth, critics say. Researchers led by Thomas Perls and Paola Sebastiani from Boston University reported July 1 in an online publication in Science that they had identified 150 genetic markers that distinguish centenarians from people with average life spans with 77 percent accuracy. Almost immediately the study came under fire because of a technical flaw. Most of the controversy stems from the devices used...

The government says I am being misled by useless information about my genes. I disagree. "Misleading and of little or no practical use to consumers" is the way that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) described the results of direct-to-consumer genetic screening tests in a report unveiled last week. To reach this damning conclusion, the GAO sent in genetic samples from five people for testing by four leading direct-to-consumer testing companies. For each donor the GAO sent two DNA samples, one sample using the person’s actual profile and one using a fictitious profile. Although the testing companies were not identified in...

Contact: Peggy Calicchia calicchi@cshl.edu 516-422-4012 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Mitochondrial genome analysis revises view of the initial peopling of North America June 29, 2010 – The initial peopling of North America from Asia occurred approximately 15,000-18,000 years ago, however estimations of the genetic diversity of the first settlers have remained inaccurate. In a report published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have found that the diversity of the first Americans has been significantly underestimated, underscoring the importance of comprehensive sampling for accurate analysis of human migrations. Substantial evidence suggests that humans first crossed into North America from Asia over...

Genetic tests show clear differences between the Welsh and English It suggests that between 50% and 100% of the indigenous population of what was to become England was wiped out, with Offa's Dyke acting as a "genetic barrier" protecting those on the Welsh side. had genes that were almost identical. But there were clear differences between the genetic make-up of Welsh people studied. The research team studied the Y-chromosome, which is passed almost unchanged from father to son, and looked for certain genetic markers. Ethnic links: Many races share common bonds The English and Frisians studied had almost identical genetic...

Wolves were domesticated no more than 16,300 years ago in southern China, a new genetic analysis suggests—and it's possible the canines were tamed to be livestock, not pets, the study author speculates. "In this region, even today, eating dog is a big cultural thing," noted study co-author Peter Savolainen, a biologist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. "And you can also see in the historical records as far back as you can go that eating dogs has been very common" in East Asia. "Therefore, you have to think of the possibility that this was one of the...

Results could shed light on origins of various diseasesJune 3, 2010 — (BRONX, NY) — Using sophisticated genetic analysis, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and New York University School of Medicine have published a study indicating that Jews are a widely dispersed people with a common ancestry. Jews from different regions of the world were found to share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and that date back to ancient times. The study also provides the first detailed genetic maps of the major Jewish subpopulations, a resource that can be used to...

genetic variation in Africa is structured geographically, and to a lesser extent, linguistically. The findings are consistent with the notion that populations in close geographic proximity that speak linguistically similar languages are more likely to exchange genes. Furthermore, genetic variation in Africa appears consistent with the natural, geographic barriers that limit gene flow. In particular, there are geographic, and therefore genetic, distinctions between northern African and sub-Saharan African populations due to the vast desert that limited migration. "Focusing on particular exceptions to these broad patterns will enable us to discern and fully appreciate the complex population histories that have contributed...

MADISON — Genetic abnormalities are most often discussed in terms of differences so miniscule they are actually called "snips" — changes in a single unit along the 3 billion that make up the entire string of human DNA. "There's a whole world beyond SNPs — single nucleotide polymorphisms — and we've stepped into that world," says Brian Teague, a doctoral student in genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There are much bigger changes in there." Variation on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of DNA's smallest pieces — large swaths varying in length or location or even showing...

The structural model of the mammoth hemoglobin, with the three key changes to the protein highlighted in red. Illustration by Ansgar Philippsen A team of international researchers has brought the primary component of mammoth blood back to life using ancient DNA preserved in bones from Siberian specimens 25,000 to 43,000 years old. Studies of recreated mammoth hemoglobin, published May 3, 2010, in Nature Genetics, reveal special evolutionary adaptations that allowed the mammoth to cool its extremities down in harsh Arctic conditions to minimize heat loss. "It has been remarkable to bring a complex protein from an extinct species, such...

Forensics experts at the University of Dundee Scotland say that the bones most likely belonged to a man from modern-day Tunisia who spent about a decade living in England before he died... The man -- who appears to have died of a spinal abscess -- was identified as African by studying his skeleton and the historical record of the friary where he was buried.

Scientists have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of a 30,000-year-old European hunter-gatherer.> The researchers were able to assign the Kostenki individual to haplogroup "U2", which is relatively uncommon among modern populations. U2 appears to be scattered at low frequencies in populations from South and Western Asia, Europe and North Africa. Despite its rarity, the very presence of this haplogroup in today's Europeans suggests some continuity between Palaeolithic hunters and the continent's present-day inhabitants, argue the authors of the latest study. >

DNA that is left in the remains of long-dead plants, animals, or humans allows a direct look into the history of evolution. So far, studies of this kind on ancestral members of our own species have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish the ancient DNA from modern-day human DNA contamination. Now, research by Svante Pääbo from The Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, published online on December 31st in Current Biology — a Cell Press publication — overcomes this hurdle and shows how it is possible to directly analyze DNA from a member of our own species who...

Research has revealed that a genetic variation protects against type 2 diabetes when inherited from a person's father, but increases risk of the same condition when it comes from the mother. It is among five DNA variants with different medical effects that depend on the parent of origin which have been identified by researchers at deCODE Genetics in Iceland... While hundreds of common genetic variations that affect disease risk have been discovered in the past two years, they together explain only a small fraction of the heritable factors that are known to play a part in conditions such as diabetes,...

...The plateau, with an average altitude above 4,000 meters and known as "the Roof of the World" in southwestern China, is one of the most challenging areas in the world for human settlement due to its environmental extremes, such as extreme cold and low oxygen levels. ...with the drastic drop of temperature on the Earth in the Last Glacial Maximum of the Late Paleolithic Age, about 23,000 years ago, many species could not adapt to the changes and died out... From the perspective of genetic continuity studies, geneticists had also attempted to find out when modern humans settled on the...

A team of Spanish and Portuguese researchers has carried out molecular genetic analysis of the Y chromosome (transmitted only by males) of the aboriginal population of the Canary Islands to determine their origin and the extent to which they have survived in the current population. The results suggest a North African origin for these paternal lineages which, unlike maternal lineages, have declined to the point of being practically replaced today by European lineages... Although contribution is now mainly European, scientists state that North African and Sub-Saharan contribution was higher in the 17th and 18th centuries. The explanation as to why...

Information could be used to understand the evolution of biology and physiology of ruminants, develop healthier and more efficient cattle, find ancient relatives and understand human diseaseCOLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— Pairing a new approach to prepare ancient DNA with a new scientific technique developed specifically to genotype a cow, an MU animal scientist, along with a team of international researchers, created a very accurate and widespread "family tree" for cows and other ruminants, going back as far as 29 million years. This genetic information could allow scientists to understand the evolution of cattle, ruminants and other animals. This same technique also...

The mixing of two distinct lineages led to most modern-day Indians. The population of India was founded on two ancient groups that are as genetically distinct from each other as they are from other Asians, according to the largest DNA survey of Indian heritage to date. Nowadays, however, most Indians are a genetic hotchpotch of both ancestries, despite the populous nation's highly stratified social structure. "All Indians are pretty similar," says Chris Tyler-Smith, a genome researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK, who was not involved in the study. "The population subdivision has not had a dominating...

Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before ColumbusBy Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience Which came first–the chicken or the European? Popular history, and a familiar rhyme about Christopher Columbus, holds that Europeans made contact with the Americas in 1492, with some arguing that the explorer and his crew were the first outsiders to reach the New World. But chicken bones recently unearthed on the coast of Chile—dating prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of America and resembling the DNA of a fowl species native to Polynesia—may challenge that notion, researchers say. “Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own—they...

Spanish researchers say they have found that a gene in modern humans that makes some people dislike a bitter chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, was also present in Neanderthals hundreds of thousands of years ago... The scientists made the discovery after recovering and sequencing a fragment of the TAS2R38 gene taken from 48,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found at a site in El Sidron, in northern Spain, they said in a report released Wednesday by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)... Substances similar to PTC give a bitter taste to green vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage as well...

Analysis of ancient DNA from skeletons suggests that Europe's first farmers were not the descendants of the people who settled the area after the retreat of the ice sheets. Instead, the early farmers probably migrated into major areas of central and eastern Europe about 7,500 years ago, bringing domesticated plants and animals with them, says Barbara Bramanti from Mainz University in Germany and colleagues. The researchers analyzed DNA from hunter-gatherer and early farmer burials, and compared those to each other and to the DNA of modern Europeans. They conclude that there is little evidence of a direct genetic link between...

When Anglo-Saxons first arrived in Britain 1,600 years ago, they created an apartheid-like society that oppressed the native Britons and wiped out almost all of the British gene pool, according to a new study. By treating Britons like slaves and imposing strict rules, the small band of Anglo-Saxons -- who had come from what is now Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands -- quickly dominated the country, leaving a legacy of Germanic genes and the English language, both of which still dominate Britain today. The new theory helps explain historical, archaeological, and genetic evidence that until now had seemed contradictory, including...

Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell. Their results appear in the July issue of the journal Human Mutation. This discovery may undercut the rationale behind numerous large-scale genetic studies conducted over the last 15 years, studies which were supposed to isolate the causes of scores of human diseases.

A team of California geneticists has found that many of the world's peoples are genetically adapted to the cold because their ancestors lived in northern climates during the Ice Age. The genetic change affects basic body metabolism and may influence susceptibility to disease and to the risks of the calorie-laden modern diet. The finding also breaks ground in showing that the human population has continued to adapt to forces of natural selection since the dispersal from its ancestral homeland in Africa some 50,000 years ago. The genetic adaptation to cold is still carried by many Northern Europeans, East Asians and...

Scientists have called it "junk DNA." They have long been perplexed by these extensive strands of genetic material that dominate the genome but seem to lack specific functions. Why would nature force the genome to carry so much excess baggage? Now researchers from Princeton University and Indiana University who have been studying the genome of a pond organism have found that junk DNA may not be so junky after all. They have discovered that DNA sequences from regions of what had been viewed as the "dispensable genome" are actually performing functions that are central for the organism. They have concluded...

People have a deep desire to communicate with animals, as is evident from the way they converse with their dogs, enjoy myths about talking animals or devote lifetimes to teaching chimpanzees how to speak. A delicate, if tiny, step has now been taken toward the real thing: the creation of a mouse with a human gene for language.

...In the genetic analysis, published in 2007, Driscoll, another of us (O'Brien) and their colleagues focused on two kinds of DNA that molecular biologists traditionally examine to differentiate subgroups of mammal species: DNA from mitochondria, which is inherited exclusively from the mother, and short, repetitive sequences of nuclear DNA known as microsatellites. Using established computer routines, they assessed the ancestry of each of the 979 individuals sampled based on their genetic signatures. Specifically, they measured how similar each cat's DNA was to that of all the other cats and grouped the animals having similar DNA together. They then asked whether...

Julia Pastrana became famous as the "bearded lady" in the mid-1800s. Now, more than 150 years later, scientists have discovered the genetic mutations responsible for her rare condition. The disorder, known as congenital generalized hypertrichosis terminalis (CGHT) with gingival hypertrophy, is characterized by excessive growth of dark hairs all over the body, distorted facial features, and enlarged gums. In some cases, people can have CGHT with normal gums. All of these diseases fall into a group of conditions called congenital generalized hypertrichosis (CGH). The disease is difficult to study because it is so rare. After analyzing the genomes of members...

/ By Geoff • March 20, 2009 Sometimes we see things so often that we simply forget to ask “why are they like that?� For instance, let’s take a closer look at domestic animals. Dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs - animals that we live with, and who couldn’t live without us.Common Traits What do all these domestic animals have in common? Now this isn’t a particularly subtle example, but that’s kind of the point. You can see that all of these domestic animals have large white patches - they’ve lost pigment in their coats in some areas. Why do...