Feb 23 2010
The journal Current Biology has a special review issue on the global genetic history of Homo sapiens. The articles are written for a fairly technical audience, but if it’s a topic you’re interested in, you might want to check it out. All of the articles are available online for free.
Archaeogenetics — Towards a ‘New [...]
Jun 04 2009
Great apes really do giggle when tickled, new research says – just like you and me.
Researchers from the University of Hannover in Germany recorded the tickle-induced vocalizations from three human infants and 21 infant and juvenile orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos and analyzed this acoustic data to find similarities and differences among the five species. [...]
May 28 2009
Type 1 diabetes is on the rise in European children, says a new report.
Researchers studied type 1 diabetes data collected between 1989 and 2003 at 20 centers in 17 European countries. Their results, published online yesterday in the Lancet, show that more children, especially younger children, are being diagnosed with the disease each year. Based [...]
Feb 20 2009
Almost since the 1871 publication of “The Descent of Man,” in which Charles Darwin applied his theory of natural selection to the human species, biologists have argued over whether the dramatic series of evolutionary events that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens continues to this day.
Some have argued that culture and technology have eclipsed [...]
Feb 13 2009
Generally when you think about what separates humans from other species, features like upright walking, large brains and language come to mind.
But diet has actually played an enormous role in human evolution. Today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a panel of anthropologists, geneticists and paleontologists got together [...]
Oct 27 2008
The Spittoon has pointed out several times in the last few months (here, here and here) that when researchers look for evidence of interbreeding between early humans and Neanderthals, they often fail to find any.
But there are still a number of geneticists who would like us to pay heed to the words of former defense [...]
Oct 02 2008
Before efforts to sequence the human genome began, scientists thought they’d find about 100,000 protein coding genes in the three billion bases pairs of DNA that are found in almost every cell. But much to everyone’s surprise, the true number turned out to be much lower. It’s now thought that the human genome [...]
Aug 21 2008
An animal’s ability to survive often depends on how well it can avoid predators. Many species of fish, birds, and mammals have evolved ingenious methods of staying hidden from predators by blending into the background in one form or another. But what about animals that do the opposite? How and why would such attention-grabbing features [...]
Aug 07 2008
Despite mounting genetic evidence that modern humans are not descended from Neanderthals, there are still some who argue that our two species interbred when both roamed Europe about 35,000 years ago.
A report appearing tomorrow in the journal Cell puts another nail in that theory’s coffin. Svante Paabo’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology [...]
Jul 01 2008
Last month I had the opportunity to go to the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution conference in the striking city of Barcelona. This is the premiere conference for geneticists studying evolution in everything from bacteria to fruit flies, weeds, worms and our favorite model organism, humans! This is a highly interactive conference: almost everyone [...]
