The targeted gene used for the edit is conserved across evolution, suggesting the technique could work in more animals than just mice.
Category: sex – Page 17
A gene editing technique may prevent the slaughter of animals not needed by the livestock industry.
Summary: Changes in human sex ratio at birth are associated with the presence of air and water pollution, a new study reports.
Source: PLOS
Changes in the human sex ratio at birth—defined as the percentage of newborns that are boys—are associated with the presence of air and water pollutants, but are not predictably associated with seasonality or weather, according to a new study of more than 6 million births in the US and Sweden.
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Papers referenced in the video:
Inter-and intraindividual variability in daily resting heart rate and its associations with age, sex, sleep, BMI, and time of year: Retrospective, longitudinal cohort study of 92,457 adults.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32023264/
Heart rate variability with photoplethysmography in 8 million individuals: a cross-sectional study.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33328029/
Some Drosophila species have cryptic sex-ratio drive systems. Here, the authors show rapid expansion of a driver gene family, Distorter on the X, in three closely related Drosophila species on the X chromosome and suppressors on the autosomes.
For example, scientists recently treated a patient’s severe depression with a neural implant that zaps her brain 300 times per day and, she says, has allowed her to spontaneously laugh and feel joy for the first time in years. Of course, the treatment requires an electrode implanted deep into the brain, which currently reserves it for the most extreme medical cases — but as brain interface tech inexorably becomes more advanced and widely available, there’s no reason such a device couldn’t become a consumer gadget as well.
At the research’s current rate of trajectory, experts told Futurism, the tech could conceivably hit the market in just a few years. But what we don’t know is what it will mean for us, psychologically as individuals and sociologically as a society, when we can experience genuine pleasure from the push of a button. And all those questions become even more complex, of course, when applied to the messy world of sex.
“A big question that remains unanswered is whether sextech will ultimately become a complement to our sex lives or a substitute,” Kinsey Institute research fellow Justin Lehmiller, an expert on sex and psychology, told Futurism.
Researchers have discovered how an ancient species of beetle has survived without having sex.
The Oppiella nova is a species of all female “ancient asexual” beetle mites, according to a press release from the University of Cologne. For years, scientists have struggled to figure out how exactly the creatures reproduce and survive despite not having sex. At one point, they hypothesized that the beetle mites occasionally produce a reproductive male by accident (a la “Jurassic Park”).
Now, they have cracked the elusive puzzle: the beetles can create clones of itself.
“Our study points to sex-and environment-specific effects of a common genetic variant. In the mice, we observed that Ghrd3 leads to a ‘female-like’ expression pattern of dozens of genes in male livers under calorie restriction, which potentially leads to the observed size reduction,” Saitou says.
“Females, already smaller in size, may suffer from negative evolutionary consequences if they lose body weight. Thus, it is a reasonable and also very interesting hypothesis that a genetic variant that may affect response to nutritional stress has evolved in a sex-specific manner,” Mu says.
A new study delves into the evolution and function of the human growth hormone receptor gene, and asks what forces in humanity’s past may have driven changes to this vital piece of DNA.
The research shows, through multiple avenues, that a shortened version of the gene—a variant known as GHRd3—may help people survive in situations where resources are scarce or unpredictable.
Findings will be published on Sept. 24 in Science Advances.
EXCLUSIVE Pricier sex robots have already been equipped with a range of artificial intelligence features, with customers shelling out thousands on groundbreaking synthetic companions dailystar.
Researchers on quest to understand how different sexes first evolved.
For 30 years, University of Tokyo Associate Professor Hisayoshi Nozaki has traveled an hour west of Tokyo to visit the Sagami River and collect algal samples to understand how living things evolved different sexes. Through new analysis of samples collected in 2007 and 2013 from dam lakes along the river, Lake Sagami and Lake Tsukui, researchers identified a species of freshwater algae that evolved three different sexes, all of which can breed in pairs with each other.
This phenomenon of three sexes is slightly different from hermaphroditism. In species that normally have two sexes, a hermaphroditic individual who can produce both the male and female sex cells usually exists due to unusual gene expression. Many plants and some invertebrate species have three sexes due to normal gene expression, but this is the first time a species of algae or fungi has been identified with three sexes.