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Genetics and Health

April 21st, 2008

Charles Darwin’s first draft of “The Origin of Species” goes on-line

Charles Darwin
Following my recent article about Darwin’s 150th Anniversary, the first draft of his book, “The Origin of Species” which changed the world’s attitude to evolution is available for the first time online.  Papers which led to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution were previously only available to scholars at Cambridge University’s library.
This release makes his private papers, mountains […]

By Elaine -- 1 comment

April 14th, 2008

“The Science Century” from The Washington Post

 
The Washington Post featured a series of thought-provoking articles in ‘The Science Century’ section of the newspaper. 
Here are some of my favourites:
The Post’s Joel Achenbach writes about how “the most important things
happening in the world today…[will] be happening in laboratories — out
of sight, inscrutable and unhyped until the very moment when they change
life as we […]

By Elaine -- 2 comments

April 5th, 2008

Helicos sequences virus with first ever single molecule sequencer method

 
Scientists from Helicos BioSciences, Ohio University, and Stanford University have published a paper in Science describing the first single-molecule sequencing of a whole genome.
The researchers used a single-molecule sequencing, sequencing-by-synthesis method, developed by Helicos, to sequence the roughly 7,000-nucleotide genome of the M13 virus.  In the company’s version of single-molecule sequencing, an approach first proposed in the […]

By Elaine -- 0 comments

March 4th, 2008

Craig Venter and his fourth generation fuels

 
Geneticist Craig Venter has announced that he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.  He disclosed his potentially world-changing “fourth-generation fuel” project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in California. Among the audience were Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.
Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. […]

By Elaine -- 4 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

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