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.
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How did we tame wild animals?
Genes controlling the development of the brain and nervous system were fundamentally important for animal domestication, according to new research ...
10 myths and controversies of GMOs by I Fucking Love Science
Genetically modified crops are a topic of intense debate that have sparked a lot of controversy over the years, fueled ...
Personal genomics: Care to update your haplogroup status page?
Personalized genomics offers the opportunity to revolutionize medical care and our understanding of disease. But many first adopters won’t wait ...
Speciation may be possible without geographic division
German researcher Christian Rabeling was digging up ant colonies on a college campus in Brazil when he found something unexpected—certain ...
How a small stretch of DNA can keep species separate — even when they interbreed
Sometimes, two distinct species interbreed, even though they're technically not supposed to. But what stops these rare cases of hybridization ...
Using consumer genetics to map the world’s genealogy
While millions of people spent last weekend dumping buckets of ice water on their heads and documenting it on Facebook ...
New dating technique supports evidence of human-Neanderthal relationship
Neanderthals and humans lived together in Europe for thousands of years, concludes a timeline based on radiocarbon dates from 40 ...
Why some ancestry might not show up in your DNA
Most Americans with colonial stock in their family could probably trace at least one genealogical line back to a Native ...
Australian state legistlates anonymity agreement for sperm donors and their children
Victorians conceived through sperm donation will now be able to find out who their biological father is - but only ...
How do hummingbirds find life-sustaining nectar without sweet-taste receptor genes?
Birds can't taste sweet, they lack all traces of genes for sweet-taste receptors. So how is it that hummingbirds -- ...
Do Koko and other ‘talking’ apes communicate the same as humans?
Last week, people around the world mourned the death of beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams. According to the Gorilla Foundation ...
Humans pushed Neanderthals to extinction, research suggests
Guilty as charged. Over the years, humans have often been accused of killing off our Neanderthal cousins, although climate change, stupidity and even bad ...
Black Plague modified human genes, no biotech needed
Evidence continues to build that at least part of our ancestors’ story is encoded in our DNA--and the information comes ...
Genetic explanation for short stature in humans
It's not another tall tale: Evolutionary biologists have developed a new understanding of the genetic basis of short stature in ...
Human and dogs’ relationship based on dominance hierarchy
For dog lovers, comparative psychologists Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi have an unsettling conclusion. Many researchers think that as humans ...
Diet wars: ‘Caveman diet’ is all the rage, but ignores what our ancient ancestors really ate
Before the advances that made agriculture possible, humans ate solely what they could hunt and gather, which varied wildly depending ...
Fossils tell of mammals’ rough road to survival
When the asteroid slammed into prehistoric Mexico and drew the curtain on the Cretaceous, dinosaurs did not fare very well. All ...
23andMe moves to mend fences with FDA, seeks Bloom syndrome test approval
Seven months after the FDA forced 23andMe to stop reporting health results to its customers, the personal genomics company is ...
Twins, separated and reuinted, illustrate genetic strength
Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were identical twins raised apart from the age of four weeks. When the twins were finally ...
Information-rich society drains our brains of creativity if we don’t take needed breaks
Creativity, argues neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, requires mental downtown for ideas and connections to bubble up out of our knowledge base ...
Mapping evolutionary history with genes for smell
Animals have been smelling for hundreds of millions of years, but the evolution of that sense is difficult to trace ...
Researchers tackle questions on origin of life on Earth
All life on Earth came from one common ancestor – a single-celled organism – but what it looked like, how ...
How ancient humans can help us better understand ourselves
For 200,000 years, modern humans have walked the earth. How did we become what we are today? In answering this ...
Video: Appetite control and emotion arise from similar brain areas
Relatively few neurons, only thousands, control appetite in a brain region linked to inhibition, fear and emotion according to a ...
Did the Hobbit have Down syndrome?
Was H. floresiensis aka the Hobbit really a different species of ancient hominid? Or, as a new study may indicate, ...
Does Nicholas Wade’s ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ focus on ‘race’ inaccurately portray human differences?
A new book by Nicholas Wade is being condemned by scientists, who claim that it paints a false picture of ...
Your brain is making subliminal, near-instantaneous judgements of people based on their faces
Your brain is making a snap judgement on the trustworthiness of each stranger you see based on their faces -- ...
