Genetics
- Genetics
Bromine found to be essential to animal life
Fruit flies deprived of the element bromine can’t make normal connective tissue that supports cells and either don’t hatch or die as larvae.
- Genetics
Blind mole-rats are loaded with anticancer genes
Genes of the long-lived blind mole-rat help explain how the animal evades cancer and why it lost vision.
- Chemistry
Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step
Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.
- Microbes
Irish potato famine microbe traced to Mexico
The pathogen that triggered the Irish potato famine in the 1840s originated in central Mexico, not the Andes, as some studies had suggested.
- Genetics
How a genetic quirk makes hair naturally blond
Natural blonds don’t need hair dye. They have a variation on a genetic enhancer that dampens pigment production in their hair follicles, scientists say.
- Life
Flightless birds’ history upset by ancient DNA
The closest known relatives of New Zealand’s small, flightless kiwis were Madagascar’s elephant birds, so ancestors must have done some flying rather than just drifting with continents.
- Genetics
Qatari people carry genetic trace of early migrants out of Africa
Qatari genomes carry shards of DNA that date back 60,000 years, when humans began to leave Africa.
- Genetics
Spider genomes give hints about venom, silk production
The genetic codes identify new proteins that may be involved in making and turning on toxins in venom and also those used to make spider silk.
- Genetics
Organism with artificial DNA alphabet makes its debut
Using DNA molecules other than A, C, G and T, scientists have created the first living organism with an expanded genetic alphabet.
- Humans
Neandertals’ inferiority to early humans questioned
Early modern humans may not have been smarter or more technologically or socially savvy than their Neandertal neighbors.
- Genetics
E. coli’s mutation rate linked to cells’ crosstalk
When E. coli cells are in smaller crowds, their genes mutate at an increased rate.
- Life
1918 flu pandemic linked to human, bird virus gene swap
The 1918 pandemic flu, which killed up to 50 million people, may have come from a human virus and a bird virus swapping genetic material.
