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Japan is still struggling to recover from the devastation caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that hit the country last March. One of the long-term problems is reclaiming farmland ravaged by the tsunami. And mutant rice might be the solution. More »
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Sometimes, it already seems like the websites you visit know more about you than you know about yourself — but this is just the beginning. Every day you're helping to generate masses more data, which computers are getting better and better at crunching. How long will it be before the predictive power of these systems becomes so powerful, they're almost magical? More »
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Spider silk is one of those wonderful materials whose incredibly tensile properties are the stuff of myth. That's why it's been the target of years of transgenic research. As far back as 2000, researchers were genetically engineering other animals to produce it — like the infamous spider-goat. However, many of their attempts have had problems, either because so little silk is produced, or it requires extensive post-production to render it usable. Sure, you can milk spiders directly, but the process is slow, difficult, and extremely costly. More »
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These two rhesus monkeys are called Roku and Hex. They look like regular old rhesus monkeys, and indeed they were born completely normal and healthy. But they are, in fact, chimeras, each the result of splicing six different genomes together. More »
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Genome analysts at 23andMe have devised a new way to reveal the secrets inside your DNA. Their latest test will reveal how many of your genes come from Neanderthals. Be warned: some people have a lot of Neanderthal in them. More »
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If you were to suggest that members of Elasmobranchii — the subclass of cartilaginous fishes that includes sharks, rays, and skates — look incredibly different from us humans, I doubt that many people would argue the point. In fact, one look at the alien-like skeleton of Leucoraja erinacea, the species of skate pictured up top, would drive your assertion home rather nicely, wouldn't you say? More »
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For the first time ever, scientists have sequenced the genome of a creature who migrates long distances: the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch Genome Project hopes to provide insight into the butterflies' mysterious migratory pattern, which involves travel over great distances for several generations. How do these creatures return to the territory where their great-grandparents were born, without ever having seen it? More »
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Researchers have identified a gene associated with empathy and sociability, and you can tell if someone has it just by watching their body language. More »
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There is a vast, unseen marketplace that connects us all. The traders are the trillions of bacteria that live on or within our bodies; the commodities they exchange are genes. This flow of genes around our bodies allows bacteria to rapidly evolve new skills, including the abilities to resist antibiotics, cause disease, or break down environmental chemicals. In the past, scientists have caught glimpses of individual deals, but now the full size of the marketplace is becoming clear. More »
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Twenty-two thousand years ago, a lake was formed, burst its dam, and washed away. Recently, two sciences came together to re-discover this short-lived chunk of water. Find out how even a brief rush of water and rock left genetic and geological traces that were picked up millenia later. More »
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An inhibitor in your body might be sapping your strength, taking away your endurance, making you feel cold, and giving you diabetes. When scientists eliminated it, they unlocked the key to super strength in both mice and worms. Find out what's in your body that's making you weak. More »
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Last month I was lucky enough to visit one of the biggest genomics labs in the world. At the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, CA, huge rooms full of genome sequencing machines work 24/7 to crunch the codes that create life. And the research here, funded by the US Department of Energy, has a purpose. The biologists and geneticists at JGI, several of whom helped sequence the first human genome in the 1990s, are trying to unlock the secret of sustainable biofuels that enhance the environment. More »
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A bacterium found in sewage water could revolutionize modern medicine. It's basically the bacterial equivalent of a vampire, spending its time hunting other bacteria and sucking out all their nutrients. This could revolutionize antibotics and stop the rise of "super bugs." More »
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Over at Discover magazine, Veronique Greenwood has written a terrific article explaining the development of gene therapy, one of the most promising avenues of medical research over the last several decades. And, she explains, this basic, life-saving research couldn't have been done without the help of government funding: More »
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Not all weed is created equal. Some members of the Cannabis genus pump out tetrahydrocannabinol (aka THC, the plant's main psychoactive chemical) like nobody's business, while others produce very little of the mind-altering molecule. But the genetic basis for why some plants excel at getting you high while others are best suited for, say, their use in textiles has long been a mystery. Until now. More »
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There are many things that set us apart from our primate cousins, but the biggest (literally) is our brains. Our oversized minds have let us carve out a unique evolutionary path, and it's all thanks to a single replicated gene. More »
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They're tiny sea creatures who attach themselves to rocks, and look a bit like colorful sacks topped with delicate tentacles. They're one of the most ancient animals on Earth, and share a common ancestor with humans (along with all other vertebrates). And they're immortal. No, really. More »
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The plague that wiped out over a third of Europe's population in the 14th century came from a bacteria known as Yersinia pestis. Now we've sequenced its genome...and it's weirdly, almost worryingly identical to its modern descendants. More »
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Last year saw the stunning announcement of synthetic bacteria. Now the next step has been taken, a move towards a synthetic organism that's markedly more complex — yeast. More »
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320 million years ago, mammals and reptiles reached an evolutionary parting of the ways. We've now sequenced a lizard genome for the first time ever, and it's vastly different from our own...but in a few crucial ways, it's shockingly similar. More »
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The yeast Saccharomyces cerivisiae is the brewer's go-to fungus for converting sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide in potent potables like ciders and ales, but when it comes to brewing lager beer... well, lager brewing is a completely different animal. In fact, to be more specific, lager-brewing requires a different organism altogether. More »
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The Cannabis sativa genome has been sequenced by a team of scientists in Amsterdam (yes, really). The raw genetic sequence was posted yesterday to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service by a company called Medicinal Genomics — just in time for the weekend. More »
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Adermatoglyphia is an incredibly rare genetic condition that causes people to have no fingerprints. It's been nicknamed "immigration delay disease" due to the trouble it causes at border crossings. More »
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There was once a time when witches could place a curse not only on their enemy, but on their enemy's sons and daughters, stretching on into eternity. Then came the era of science, when what happened to people was a combination of chance, determination, and genetics, and no family curses could touch the young. But now, thanks to epigenetics, we can again blight the accursed seed of our foes. Find out how! More »
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Mice are the first step in trying out new drugs that may one day help humans. The problem is that these rodents metabolize drugs in often a very different way than we do, meaning that much of the research in mice can't be applied to humans. Researchers from Stanford University may have found a way around this by creating mice with human livers. More »
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Our genes don't just help determine who we are — they also preserve an incredibly ancient record of who our ancestors were. Our genomes can actually reveal human population sizes dating all the way back to before humans even existed. More »
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The naked mole-rat lives for thirty years - compared to 1-2 years for other rodents - and we've never found any evidence that it can get cancer. Now we're peeking inside its genome to figure out what makes it special. More »
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Today a group of medical researchers reported the discovery of something very intriguing in a type of pancreatic cancer called PanNET. Turns out PanNET is associated with mutations in two genes that help control a part of your DNA that determines whether you die. More »
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Calcium is everywhere in your body, not just your bones and teeth. In fact, this mineral is crucial to countless biological processes, from regulating your hormones to aiding muscle function. And when you don't have enough of it, the results can be disastrous. More »
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In the United States alone, 20 million people suffer from peripheral neuropathy, a condition that involves nerve degeneration and sometimes extreme pain, often without any explanation. Now we've found the culprit for this mysterious pain...and it's all one gene's fault. More »
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It's only relatively recently that the scientific community has begun to accept that early humans interbred with our Neanderthal cousins. Now it looks as if it was not only possible, it was essential for providing us with immunity from strange diseases. More »
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For the first time ever, we can track the number of genetic mutations in each generation of a human family. Humans are mutating at a downright glacial pace, with a shockingly tiny number of mutations passed on in each generation. More »
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A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence's The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping). More »
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Queen bees are much larger than worker bees, and live years longer, for one reason. They gorge on a sugary protein called "royal jelly." Now a scientist has made ultra-large flies using royal jelly too. Are humans next? More »
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Only a few molecules separate you from having sensory whiskers and a penis spine. That's right - evolution has cheated you out of those whiskers that make your cat a super-sensor and the spines that, well, make your penis super-sensitive. A study published today in Nature reveals that human DNA still bears traces of genes that could, if tinkered with slightly, cause the next generation of Homo sapiens to have new sensory organs. And penis spines. How would that work? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5780359&view=rss&microfeed=true In the UK, the University of Cambridge is deep into its Science Festival, and one particular speaker's topic caught our eye. Metabolic researcher Stephen O'Rahilly has determined that the genetic reasons that some people become fat or thin are not quite what we had thought. He's giving a talk on his findings this week at Cambridge, but we got a little preview of what he's going to say. More »
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If the body were a repressive dictatorial regime, one of the enforcers of its brutal conformity would be p53. This is a gene that stalks the body, making sure every cell is kept in check. One of p53's more famous functions is forcing cells with damaged or defective DNA to commit suicide. They can't be allowed to replicate and harm the collective. No doubt p53 would be the bad guy in a post-apocalyptic society, but it's the hero of anatomy. A new scientific study has revealed more about how p53 deals out harsh justice to cells who might spread cancer throughout the body. More »
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The water flea species Daphnia pulex is barely more than a millimeter long, is completely translucent, has no clear divisions between their various body parts...and has the largest genome of any animal we've ever encountered. It has an incredible 31,000 genes in its genome, over 8,000 more than humans have. So what's such a tiny organism doing with such a huge amount of genes? More »
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Orangutans, the most distant of our great ape relatives, changed less in 15 million years than our species has in 200,000. And yet orangutans also have tremendous genetic diversity, an apparent contradiction that has created a strange evolutionary riddle. More »
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Your friends might seem like an essentially random bunch, based on shared interests and emotional compatibility. But there might be something genetic going on - and it's related to how much you drink. More »
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