Free Republic

VlincRNAs Provide Clues to Genomic Dark Matter by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. * Scientists have known for several years that the human genome is pervasively copied into various RNA molecules (transcripts), although scientists have been unsure about what much of it actually does. New research shows that about 10 percent of the genome encodes a newly characterized type of regulatory molecules called "vlincRNAs."1 When scientists first completed a draft of the human genome, they discovered that it only contained about 20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding genes.2 However, researchers soon discovered that these protein-coding genes produced a vast array of RNA transcript variants...

Source: Public Library of Science Date: October 14, 2007 Inconsistencies With Neanderthal Genomic DNA Sequences Science Daily — Were Neanderthals direct ancestors of contemporary humans or an evolutionary side branch that eventually died out? This is one of the enduring questions in human evolution as scientists explore the relationship of fossil groups, such as Neanderthals, with people alive today. Two recent papers describing the sequencing of Neanderthal nuclear DNA from fossil bone held promise for finally answering this question [1, 2]. However, the two studies came to very different conclusions regarding the ancestral role of Neanderthals. Jeffrey D. Wall and...