Genetics

Genetics

There’s no evidence that a single ‘gay gene’ exists

Many genetic factors with small effects combine with one’s environment to influence sexual behavior, researchers say.

Humans

India’s Skeleton Lake contains the bones of mysterious European migrants

Not all of the hundreds of skeletons found at a north Indian lake are from the same place or period. What killed any of these people is still unknown.

Life

CRISPR enters its first human clinical trials

The gene editor will be used in lab dishes in cancer and blood disorder trials, and to directly edit a gene in human eyes in a blindness therapy test.

Animals

There’s more to pufferfish than that goofy spiked balloon

Three odd things about pufferfishes: how they mate, how they bite and what’s up with no fish scales?

Genetics

This gene may help worms live longer, but not healthier

Antiaging therapies may have trade-offs, research on worms suggests.

Animals

Ground beetle genitals have the genetic ability to get strange. They don’t

A new look at the genetics of sex organs finds underpinnings of conflicts over genital size.

Anthropology

Ancient DNA reveals the origins of the Philistines

A mysterious Biblical-era population may have fled Bronze Age calamities.

Health & Medicine

Antioxidants may encourage the spread of lung cancer rather than prevent it

Antioxidants protect lung cancer cells from free radicals, but also spur metastasis, two new studies suggest.

Genetics

DNA reveals a European Neandertal lineage that lasted 80,000 years

Ancient DNA from cave fossils in Belgium and Germany shows an unbroken genetic line of the extinct hominids emerged at least 120,000 years ago.

Genetics

DNA confirms a weird Greenland whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid

DNA analysis of a skull indicates that the animal had a narwhal mother and beluga father.

Genetics

Genealogy companies could struggle to keep clients’ data from police

Police probably won’t stop searching DNA family trees to find crime suspects. New restrictions on database searches could spur more fights over privacy.

Genetics

DNA reveals ancient Siberians who set the stage for the first Americans

A previously unknown population of Ice Age people who traveled across Beringia was discovered in Russia.