Our close evolutionary cousin, the common chimpanzee, comes in four subspecies, each one named after its location along an East-West band in Africa. Yet, there are chimps outside of Africa as well. Many European zoos possess a group of chimpanzees, which often plays a part in conservation plans… Wondering how the hybrids come into play? Find out […]
Category Archives: Genetics
The evolutionary history of humanity isn’t the easiest tale to tell. As time passed, we, unlike other primates, spread across the globe, colonizing the various lands we explored. All these different habitats were surely characterized by diverging sets of selection pressures. Lo and behold, there arose diversity among human beings. But finding the exact genetic […]
Imagine crops that need less pesticides because they possess an inherent resistance to certain bugs. Imagine crops that can thrive in our changing climate, or produce extra vitamins. Or grow faster. Now stop imagining. Growing knowledge of genetics and development of molecular techniques enables us to produce such crops. In fact, genetically engineered food crops […]
There’s no such thing as the human genome. Every person’s genome is unique (even identical twins aren’t really identical genetically). So, it’s no surprise that each of us carries a unique combination of alleles and mutations. And, so new study shows, we all carry a unique set of flaws in our genes. The study took […]
The roots of modern man lie in eastern Africa, so the scientific consensus maintains, supported by ample evidence. And, before we left our cradle to spread throughout the world, a lot of interesting things happened there. Two recent studies present clues about some intriguing and complex first steps of Homo sapiens. The first one, published […]
Update: The post has been slightly edited to (hopefully) clarify that non-coding DNA does not equal junk DNA, and that care has to be taken in interpreting research. (Hence the question mark in the title…). An estimated 1-3% of our DNA consists out of genes that code for proteins. The rest, so it was once […]
In comparison with other animals, human beings have big brains. So, what happened? How the human brain grew is one of the most intriguing questions in human evolutionary studies. A few recent studies have identified some pieces of what is likely to be a very complicated puzzle. (Luckily, we have big brains to figure it […]
The 2012 Olympics are coming closer, and, as such, have been a popular blog topic lately. And I’ll join in since I came across an article that looks at the progression of running speeds in three animals: dogs, horses and humans. For all three there are good datasets on the ten best performers for the […]
The human genome is estimated to contain about 23 000 genes. Where do these genes come from? Well, from your parents. And their parents. And so on. But, surely, if we go back far enough, there haven’t been 23 000 genes all along? However life originated, the first DNA carrying organisms probably had significantly fewer […]
Most introductory genetics courses follow a similar structure: base it on Mendel. Students are introduced to the experiments of the Austrian monk and using these as foundation, are taught transmission genetics. Trait inheritance, dominant and recessive alleles, chromosomes, and so on. But, this may lead students to simply learn the ‘rules of inheritance’, rather than […]
