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When it comes to regeneration, some animals are capable of amazing feats. If you cut off a salamander’s leg, it will grow back. When threatened, some geckos drop their tails to distract their predator, only to regrow them later. Other animals take the process even further. Planarian worms, jellyfish, and sea anemones can actually regenerate their bodies after being cut in half. Led by Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava, a team of researchers is shedding new light on how animals pull off the feat, along the way uncovering a number of DNA switches that appear to...

Grace Wilsey couldn’t cry. As a baby, she would lie limp in her parents’ arms, staring blankly into the distance. Her seizures wouldn’t stop and medical tests showed signs of liver damage. This was all before her second birthday. Grace’s parents were beside themselves, as any parent would be. They traveled the country visiting specialists. They ran numerous tests, but no one could diagnose Grace’s condition. “We’ve probably seen over 100 doctors,” Grace’s father said in 2014 when Grace’s symptoms were discovered. None of them could provide an explanation. Then, when their daughter turned two years old, the Wilseys tried...

While the team found that the bacteria isolated from the ISS did contain different genes than their Earthling counterparts, those genes did not make the bacteria more detrimental to human health. The bacteria are instead simply responding, and perhaps evolving, to survive in a stressful environment. As the conversation about sending travelers to Mars gets more serious, there has been an increasing interest in understanding how microbes behave in enclosed environments. "People will be in little capsules where they cannot open windows, go outside or circulate the air for long periods of time," said Hartmann. "We're genuinely concerned about how...

A special thanks to Dr. Neil Lamb at the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology. A major mission of Hudson Alpha is to educate the public and promote genomics literacy. I talked to many scientists about Genotyping but Dr. Lamb's ability to break down the complexity of the human genome is what finally brought it home for me. ----- I was concerned about what actually happens with my genetic information when submitted to 23andMe, so when they approached me and asked me if I wanted to make a video I decided to investigate it top to bottom. Visiting the Lab and...

Who’s your daddy? An unknown hominin species that bred with early human ancestors when they migrated from Africa to Australasia has been identified through genome mapping of living humans. The genome analysis also questions previous findings that modern humans populated Asia in two waves from their origin in Africa, finding instead a common origin for all populations in the Asia-Pacific region, dating back to a single out-of-Africa migration event. Modern humans first left Africa about 60,000 years ago, with some heading west towards Europe, and others flowing east into the Asia-Pacific region. Previous research looking at the genomes of people...

Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.

The call for action from scientists in the UK, US, Europe and Australia reflects a growing consensus among experts that frequent cannabis use can increase the risk of psychosis...In the UK, cannabis is the most popular illegal drug, and according to Public Health England data, more young people enter treatment centres for help with cannabis than any other drug, alcohol included.

Mice and men share about 97.5 per cent of their working DNA, just one per cent less than chimps and humans. The new estimate is based on the comparison of mouse chromosome 16 with human DNA. Previous estimates had suggested mouse-human differences as high as 15 per cent. The new work suggests that neither genome has changed much since we shared a common ancestor 100 million years ago. "The differences are going to be few rather than many," says Richard Mural of Celera Genomics, the Maryland company that compared the mouse chromosome with human DNA. "Perhaps 100 million years separating...

A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture. The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Practical homomorphic encryption manual released As genome research - and the genomes themselves - get passed around the scientific community, the world's woken up to the security and privacy risks this can involve. A Microsoft research quintet has therefore published ways to help scientists work on genomic data while reducing the risk of data theft. The team published an informal manual to help scientists and other researchers to use the Simple Encrypted Arithmetic Library (SEAL). Homomorphic encryption is a technique in which software can operate on encrypted data without decrypting it. This would let hospitals and labs to work on...

Scientists are one step closer to bringing a woolly mammoth back to life. A new analysis of the woolly mammoth genome has revealed several adaptations that allowed the furry beasts to thrive in the subzero temperatures of the last ice age, including a metabolism that allowed them to pack on insulating fat, smaller ears that lost less heat and a reduced sensitivity to cold. The findings could enable researchers to "resurrect" the ice-age icon — or at least a hybridized Asian elephant with a few of the physical traits of its woolly-haired cousin, said study co-author Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary...

The first comprehensive analysis of the woolly mammoth genome reveals extensive genetic changes that allowed mammoths to adapt to life in the arctic. Credit: Giant Screen Films © 2012 D3D Ice Age, LLC ======================================================================== The first comprehensive analysis of the woolly mammoth genome reveals extensive genetic changes that allowed mammoths to adapt to life in the arctic. Mammoth genes that differed from their counterparts in elephants played roles in skin and hair development, fat metabolism, insulin signaling and numerous other traits. Genes linked to physical traits such as skull shape, small ears and short tails were also identified. As a...

Today, 23andMe announced what Forbes reports is only the first of ten deals with big biotech companies: Genentech will pay up to $60 million for access to 23andMe's data to study Parkinson's. You think 23andMe was about selling fun DNA spit tests for $99 a pop? Nope, it's been about selling your data all along. Since 23andMe started in 2006, it's convinced 800,000 customers to hand over their DNA, one vial of spit at a time. Personal DNA reports are the consumer-facing side of the business, and that's the one we're most familiar with. It all seems friendly and fun...

Doctors expect soon to begin sequencing the genomes of healthy newborn babies as part of a government-funded research program that could have wide implications for genetic science. The research, to be conducted at major hospitals around the country, stems from a growing recognition that genome sequencing could someday be part of routine testing done on every baby. Such testing could provide doctors and parents a vast pool of data likely to reveal a wider range of potential medical risks than the traditional heel-prick test, in which a small sample of newborns’ blood is taken to check for more than two...

Genome Scrambling and Encryption Befuddles Evolution by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * One-cell creatures called ciliates are expanding our knowledge of genome dynamics and complexity. Now a newly sequenced ciliate genome reveals unimaginable levels of programmed rearrangement combined with an ingenious system of encryption.1 Contrary to the evolutionary prediction of simple-to-complex in the alleged tree of life, one-cell ciliates are exhibiting astonishing genetic complexity.2 The ciliate Oxytricha trifallax has two different genomes contained in separate nuclei. The micronucleus is dense and compact and used for reproduction while the macronucleus is dramatically rearranged, amplified, and used for the creature's standard daily living.

The earliest people in the North American Arctic remained isolated from others in the region for millennia before vanishing around 700 years ago, a new genetic analysis shows. The study, published online Thursday, also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers. Inuit hunters in the Canadian Arctic have long told stories about a mysterious ancient people known as the Tunit, who once inhabited the far north. Tunit men, they recalled, possessed powerful magic and were strong enough to crush the neck of a walrus and singlehandedly haul the massive...

New Dog Genome Research Nixes Evolutionary Paradigm by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * Evolutionists are desperate to find genomic evidence proving Darwinian ideas about natural selection and evolution. One of the chief areas where they have searched for such evidence is in the canine (dog) genome, by studying the DNA of both domestic and wild dogs. The basic paradigm describing the domestication of dogs is typically proposed as a two-phase process.1 In the first part, it is believed that dogs were originally taken from the wild as wolves by early humans who selected and bred different varieties that were useful for...

What a treat for all medieval historians! More than 500 years after he was killed, the skeleton of Richard III is giving them much more reliable biographical information than they acquired over the previous half a millennium. Henry VII, his successor, and opponent at Bosworth, encouraged his court historians to produce a warped picture of Richard. Thank God, then, for the miraculous discovery of his body in a Leicester car park in 2012, and the undeniable truths it provided. Analysis of his skeleton showed the king didn’t have a hunchback exactly; he suffered from scoliosis of the spine, meaning his...

Long stretches of DNA previously dismissed as "junk" are in fact crucial to the way our genome works, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.

Enlarge Image Laid low. A cholera ward in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a country where nearly half the people are infected with the cholera bacterium by age 15. Credit: Mark Knobil/Creative Commons Cholera kills thousands of people a year, but a new study suggests that the human body is fighting back. Researchers have found evidence that the genomes of people in Bangladesh—where the disease is prevalent—have developed ways to combat the disease, a dramatic case of human evolution happening in modern times. Cholera has hitchhiked around the globe, even entering Haiti with UN peacekeepers in 2010, but the disease's heartland is...