For many decades, evolutionary biologists assumed that the changes in DNA, known as mutations, occur irrespective of any consequences for the organism. A team led by Professor Detlef Weigel, Director at the Max Planck Institute …
The amphibians, which live only 13 miles apart, look completely alike but are genetically diverse—a surprise to scientists.
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Summary: Using chemogenetic technology to deactivate a small group of neurons in the claustrum made mice more resilient against chronic stress and reduced anxiety behaviors.
Source: Osaka University.
It is well known that long-term exposure to stress can lead to serious psychiatric problems. However, the precise mechanisms underpinning the stress response have remained elusive.
And going forward, we’ll do this with far more knowledge of what we’re doing, and more control over the genes of our progeny. We can already screen ourselves and embryos for genetic diseases. We could potentially choose embryos for desirable genes, as we do with crops. Direct editing of the DNA of a human embryo has been proven to be possible — but seems morally abhorrent, effectively turning children into subjects of medical experimentation. And yet, if such technologies were proven safe, I could imagine a future where you’d be a bad parent not to give your children the best genes possible.
Computers also provide an entirely new selective pressure. As more and more matches are made on smartphones, we are delegating decisions about what the next generation looks like to computer algorithms, who recommend our potential matches. Digital code now helps choose what genetic code passed on to future generations, just like it shapes what you stream or buy online. This might sound like dark science fiction, but it’s already happening. Our genes are being curated by computer, just like our playlists. It’s hard to know where this leads, but I wonder if it’s entirely wise to turn over the future of our species to iPhones, the internet and the companies behind them.
Discussions of human evolution are usually backward looking, as if the greatest triumphs and challenges were in the distant past. But as technology and culture enter a period of accelerating change, our genes will too. Arguably, the most interesting parts of evolution aren’t life’s origins, dinosaurs, or Neanderthals, but what’s happening right now, our present – and our future.
In a paper published today in Sciences Advances, researchers in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine revealed new details about a key enzyme that makes DNA sequencing possible. The finding is a leap forward into the era of personalized medicine when doctors will be able to design treatments based on the genomes of individual patients.
De-extinction grabbed our imagination in the 90s with Jurassic Park. Scientists have since asked: how possible is it?
According to a new study, nearly impossible. But wait—it’s not all bad news. While bringing back a faithful copy of an extinct species may be impossible, we could bring back a hybrid species that’s a genetic mix between an extinct species and its modern descendant.
Published in Current Biology, the study eschews the grandiose mammoth, instead focusing on a tiny test case: the Christmas Island rat. Hefty in size and loudly vocal when invading docked ships and their cargo, the rodents were last seen in the 1900s. With a stroke of luck, the team recovered DNA from two well-preserved museum samples and compared them against a close relative: the Norway brown rat, a popular lab model for genetic studies today.
Immortal jellyfish could actually be the key to immortality and regeneration. This article talks more in depth of its importance in the search of immortality.
Turritopsis nutricula (T. nutricula) is the one of the known reported organisms that can revert its life cycle to the polyp stage even after becoming sexually mature, defining itself as the only immortal organism in the animal kingdom. Therefore, the animal is having prime importance in basic biological, aging, and biomedical researches. However, till date, the genome of this organism has not been sequenced and even there is no molecular phylogenetic study to reveal its close relatives. Here, using phylogenetic analysis based on available 16s rRNA gene and protein sequences of Cytochrome oxidase subunit-I (COI or COX1) of T. nutricula, we have predicted the closest relatives of the organism. While we found Nemopsis bachei could be closest organism based on COX1 gene sequence; T. dohrnii may be designated as the closest taxon to T. nutricula based on rRNA. Moreover, we have figured out four species that showed similar root distance based on COX1 protein sequence.
Keywords: Turritopsis nutricula, immortal jellyfish, trans-differentiation, phylogeny, relativeness.
Marine Biological Laboratory finds gene captured from bacteria more than 60 million years ago.
Your DNA holds the blueprint to build your body, but it’s a living document: Adjustments to the design can be made by epigenetic marks. Cataloguing these marks and how they work is important for understanding biology and genetics—and coming up with therapies to address diseases and disorders.
In humans and our fellow eukaryotes, two principal epigenetic marks are known. But a team from the University of Chicago-affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory has discovered a third, novel epigenetic mark—one formerly known only in bacteria—in small freshwater animals called bdelloid rotifers.
Summary: Histone H4 mutations in the spool cause intellectual disabilities and developmental delays, a new study reports.
Source: University of Otago.
University of Otago-led research has identified a new rare genetic mutation which will finally give families around the world answers as to what is affecting their loved one.
