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Genetics and Health

Archive for the ‘Evolution’ Category

April 20th, 2008

Titan - Earth’s twin is of interest to new life-hunters

Saturn’s moon Titan - three different views
Courtesy NASA
Titan, one of Saturn’s moons is like a genetic twin to Earth.  It enjoys many of the geological features of the Earth - volcanism, tectonics, erosion, deposition and atmosphere.  The rivers flowing across these plains are formed of a hydrocarbon soup with methane as its main ingredient.
However the one […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

March 26th, 2008

1.2 million year old European human unearthed

(Picture courtesy of BBC News)
Scientists have discovered the oldest human remains in western Europe.
A jawbone and teeth discovered at the famous Atapuerca site in northern Spain have been dated between 1.1 and 1.2 million years old.
Scientists also found stone tools and animal bones with tell-tale cut marks from butchering by humans.
Its small size suggests […]

By Elaine -- 1 comment

March 10th, 2008

Transfer RNA (tRNA) - a peek into the origin of life

‘Clover structure’ of Transfer RNA 
Transfer RNA (tRNA) is ancient. It is the most direct intermediary between genes and proteins. Like many other RNAs (ribonucleic acids), tRNA aids in translating genes into the chains of amino acids that make up proteins. The fact that tRNA is so central to the task of building proteins probably means […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

March 5th, 2008

Happiness is down to your genes

 
(The Smiling Faces of Boddhastavas, Cambodia)
Ever the eternal optimist, here’s a piece of research which I can really relate to … Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh working with researchers at Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia found that happiness is partly determined by personality traits and that both personality and happiness are largely hereditary.
Rating personalities with […]

By Elaine -- 3 comments

March 3rd, 2008

Flu virus has ‘coat’ which melts in the summer and makes it less virulent

(Photo credit: Flu viruses among cilia - National Geographic magazine http://www.nationalgeographic.com/)
US scientists have discovered a possible reason why the flu virus is seasonal and tends to infect people mostly in the winter. It has a jacket that melts in the summer causing the virus to die off, and stays hard in the winter, until it […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

March 2nd, 2008

Drug responses vary between Africans and Europeans

Further to my various articles on our ancestry, differences in gene expression levels between people of European versus African ancestry appear to affect how each group responds to certain drugs or fights off specific infections, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center and the Expression Research Laboratory at Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, CA.
The researchers […]

By Elaine -- 2 comments

March 2nd, 2008

Key to “life” before its origin on earth

All amino acids are “left handed” (Image courtesy of www.answersingenesis.com) 
Scientists have long known that most compounds in living things exist in mirror-image forms. The two forms are like hands; one is a mirror reflection of the other. They are different, cannot be superimposed, yet identical in their parts.
When scientists synthesize these molecules in the laboratory, […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

February 24th, 2008

‘Out of Africa’ - 3 studies trace human global migration

 
Papers published in Nature and Science this week support the previously held theory that humans originated in East Africa, migrating outward until they reached all parts of the globe. But the genetic work from these studies brings a new level of precision to human migration studies, with each group finding subtle and intriguing details that shed light on different aspects of […]

By Elaine -- 2 comments

February 16th, 2008

Genetic adaptations to surviving a cold climate linked to diabetes, obesity and heart disease

 
Our early human ancestors originated from a hot, humid climate where natural selection focused on dispersing heat.  As humans migrated to colder climates there would have been evolutionary pressure to adapt to their new settings by boosting the processes that produce and retain heat.
Genes involved in energy metabolism are therefore likely to be central to heat and cold […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

February 12th, 2008

‘Junk DNA’ may hold key to the evolution of complex organisms

 
‘Junk DNA’ could hold the key to the evolution of complex organisms . Vertebrates, animals that possess a backbone, are the most anatomically and genetically complex of all organisms, but explaining how they achieved this complexity has perplexed scientists since the conception of evolutionary theory.
A study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,USA, claims to […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

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