Life
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- Life
News in brief: Fins to limbs with flip of genetic switch
Boost of gene activity may help explain how arms and legs evolved in vertebrates.
- Life
Feces study gets the poop on gorillas’ diet
Chemical traces in animals’ droppings reflect shifts in recent food consumption.
By Tanya Lewis - Life
Genes & Cells
Healing broken hearts, tracing Romani migration using genes, and how insulin irregularities may be linked to obesity.
- Life
Contender for world’s oldest dinosaur identified
An African specimen suggests the lineage may have arisen 15 million years earlier than thought.
By Tanya Lewis - Life
Among bass, easiest to catch are best dads
Recreational fishing may be inadvertent evolutionary force, favoring cautious fish over better caretakers of the young.
By Susan Milius - Life
Gut bacteria may affect cardiovascular risk
An abundance of antioxidant-producing microbes seems to keep plaques from breaking free and causing heart attacks and stroke.
- Life
Immune disease an added blow to fungus-ridden bat populations
Rare immune complication previously seen only in people devastates animals that had appeared to evade white nose syndrome.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
Genetic diversity exploded in recent millennia
Among hundreds of thousands of DNA variants identified in a study, a large majority arose in the past 5,000 years.
- Life
Blue whales’ diet and exercise rolled into one
Marine predator performs underwater acrobatics for best chance at catching a meal.
By Susan Milius