Ancestry & Evolution
The desire to understand our origins is primal. By examining our DNA over successive generations through the evolutionary process of inherited characteristics of human and animal populations–as well as from those species from which humans share a common ancestry–we can decipher our individual and collective past and develop medical innovations for the future.
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Save blight stricken American Chestnut? Crowd funding launches for GMO rescue
Today we are starting something new to get the public engaged in biotechnology solutions to environmental problems through the American ...
Evolutionary origins of genitalia unveiled
When the first animals scrambled out of the water to live on land, they needed limbs and lungs. And something ...
Rationalizing health risks difficult, especially when emotions in play
From Ebola to breast cancer screenings, people have a difficult time understanding where their health risks truly lie. Our emotional ...
Could genetics convert food crops to perennials, revolutionizing farming?
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. It’s a cycle nearly ...
Are Fluffy and Fido key to anti-aging research?
Dogs may join yeast and mice as candidates for large scale studies investigating drugs that may one day solve age-related ...
Fossil unveils new mammalian lineage
Four years ago, while searching for fish fossils on Madagascar, paleontologists came upon what proved to be a well-preserved cranium ...
Computer model replicates complex networks behind evolution
You inhabit something of a miracle, in engineering terms. Your body consists of trillions of cells, woven together into something ...
Low oxygen on Earth delayed evolution of early animal life
Animals were slow to evolve on Earth. While the first life forms emerged about a billion and a half years ago, ...
Is increase in ADHD an artifact of our modern educational system?
One in ten American children will be treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD at some point in their ...
What is a ‘healthy’ microbiome?
The microbiome is one of the hottest current topics in biology. According to various studies, our gut microbial community may ...
Should have asked Hamlet: Study finding Danish genes foster happiness needs some work
Why a study alleging Danes are happiest and French most grumpy because of their respective gene pool is not worth ...
Designer babies: You can screen for cystic fibrosis but intelligence is a ways off
Using a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, it’s possible to screen embryos for disease and sex before they are implanted ...
Spontaneous mutations and the genetic mysteries of autism
At least 30% of all autism cases is caused by spontaneous, or de novo, mutations. Lends new weight to hypothesis ...
Genetic technologies offer long and short term views of Ebola dangers
High yield genetic sequencers, cell phones and paper-based diagnostics are all being employed to develop a cohesive picture of the ...
Stop the ‘flying syringe’: Landscape genetics track Asian tiger mosquitoes
The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) is native to Southeast Asia, is an alarming vector for human disease like dengue, chikungunya and ...
Chimps’ feeding behavior reveals evolutionary history of intellectual development
Food reveals a lot about species' evolutionary past. Organisms are constantly adapting in response to what kind and how much ...
‘Hobbit species’ continues to provoke questions about course of human evolution
In 2003, researchers excavating a limestone cave on the remote Indonesian island of Flores made an extraordinary discovery: the 18,000-year-old ...
Can evolution can be explained by genes alone?
Charles Darwin conceived of evolution by natural selection without knowing that genes exist. Now mainstream evolutionary theory has come to ...
Gluten-free fad food choice, rarely medically dictated
Millions of people have lately adopted a gluten-free diet by self-diagnosing with gluten sensitivities in spite of the fact there ...
Genetic secret that attracts females (fruit flies to humans?)
A new study has found that female fruit flies don't simply choose a mate based on things like wing colors. They look ...
Genomes show early contact between Easter Island and the Americas
The Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen may not have arrived on Easter Island until 1722 but new genomic evidence finds that the Rapanui people living there ...
Genetic variant helped in the Arctic, but now makes us fat
Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that arose thousands of years ago in people living in the Arctic. It helped them then, ...
Before sperm meets egg
In high school biology, we all learned that development of a new organism is a complex endeavor ...
Evolution is sometimes messy or even outright ridiculous
In the real world, evolution can’t explain itself. It acts without intention, and unless we find enough revealing fossils, we ...
Lactose tolerance evolved much later than previously believed
As early humans shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture, their genomes shifted, too. But according to new research, the ...
Squids show that sometimes, evolution is predictable
A longstanding question among scientists is whether evolution is predictable. A team of researchers from UC Santa Barbara may have ...
US Ebola hysteria and money pit highlight lack of resources to confront diseases that kill far more people
The Ebola hysteria underscores how frenzy rather than need drives government responses and resources. Listeria is a disease that's not ...
