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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Society, not testosterone, is the driving force in sex, equality
[Editor's note: Excerpts are from a review of a book by writer Cordelia Fine, who challenges the notion that testosterone ...
Brief oasis of oxygen could have supported complex life 2.3 billion years ago
Earth is thought to have begun to develop its modern, oxygen-rich atmosphere as recently as 800 million years ago. This ...
Epigenetics Around the Web: Alzheimer’s drug moves closer to patients
Epigenetics Around the Web is a weekly roundup of the latest studies and news in the field of epigenetics presented ...
Asteroid strike chilled earth, paved way for rise of humans
Dinosaurs went extinct around 66 million years ago,…[but a single strike of a meteor] may not have been enough to ...
Are we slowly breeding our way to stupidity?
A study from Iceland is the latest to raise the prospect of a downwards spiral into imbecility...The scientists used a ...
Hidden code regulates harmful mutations of our genome, aiding evolution
On the one hand, mutations are needed for biological innovation, and on the other hand they cause diseases. How does ...
Free genealogy website has lots of ‘private’ information about you
There are many “people search” sites and data brokers out there, like Spokeo, or Intelius, that also know a lot about ...
Viruses in our genome may have influenced brain development, neurological diseases
Over millions of years, retroviruses have been incorporated into our human DNA, where they today make up almost 10 per ...
Piltdown Man evolution hoax reminds us about danger of confirmation bias
A 100-year-old hoax involving the "discovery" of a missing link in the human evolution chain provides insights into the pitfalls ...
Could CRISPR, gene editing radically affect human evolution?
CRISPR-Cas9, the new gene modification tool, which has been heralded as a means for inserting ourselves into evolution, is itself ...
Alzheimer’s linked gene may protect brain from parasites
People who carry one copy [of the ApoE4 gene] have a three-fold higher risk of Alzheimer’s than those with none...Even if ...
Genetics may have played a part in electing Trump president
Do our genetics influence whether we lean to the political left or right? It's obviously more complicated than that, but ...
Evolution erasing our Neanderthal genes, rooting out harmful variants
Although the Neanderthals went extinct 30,000 years ago, their genes live on in human beings. A new study at the ...
We did not evolve small teeth because of brain development or primitive food-cutting tools
The human brain and teeth have not evolved together in humans, unlike what past studies had suggested. ... Compared with ...
Science of Star Trek: Would ‘Vulcans’ really look like humans?
After studying scenes from [the Star Trek fictional universe], Mohamed Noor, an evolutionary biologist at Duke University in North Carolina, ...
Viruses have evolved so that men suffer worse symptoms than women
Some viruses might cause weaker symptoms in women than in men because it makes them more likely to spread. Many ...
Harmful gene mutations may have kept us alive in untamed wilderness
[C]ould a genetic mutation...that puts populations at risk for illnesses in one environmental setting manifest itself in positive ways in ...
Inuit gained genetic advantage against freezing cold from 500,000 year-old DNA
How do Inuit populations in Greenland cope with below-freezing temperatures for the majority of the year? They may have inherited ...
Do assumptions about race in genetics research promote the Alt-Right agenda?
[On the Internet, there are] pages after pages of Stormfront discussions on the reliability of 23andMe ancestry results and whether ...
Studying coral could reveal evolutionary reason why humans develop sex cells as embryos
At the earliest stages of life, in the embryo, our germ cells begin to develop. These are the cells that ...
Jon Entine breaks taboos on sports and ‘race’, and the future of human genetic research
Why are black athletes--15% of the world population is of African descent--overrepresented in elite football and basketball, and in world ...
‘Not In Your Genes’ review: Belief behavior stems purely from parenting ignores basic science
In celebrity psychologist Oliver James’s neo-Freudian world as outlined in his new book, Not In Your Genes, DNA has no effect ...
Discovered ancient footprints hint males had multiple “wives”
Laetoli in northern Tanzania is the site of iconic ancient footprints, capturing the moment – 3.66 million years ago – ...
Talking Biotech: Oxford’s Greger Larson on how grey wolves evolved to become man’s most loyal companion
Oxford's Greger Larson on how gray wolves evolved to become man’s most loyal companion ...
Epigenetics Around the Web: Top stories from 2016
Epigenetics Around the Web is a weekly roundup of the latest studies and news in the field of epigenetics presented ...
Tracking DNA mutations of Zika virus could reveal its evolutionary path across oceans
How do you [determine] the history of an invisible virus [like the Zika virus], which leaves no physical record? This is ...
Bacterial evolutionary origins of human organs and tissues
New research led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) reveals that a human enzyme has changed little from ...
