Genetic Archaeology Research & News
Researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle (USA) and the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at the University of Luxembourg have jointly developed a revolutionary method to analyse the genomes of yeast families. The team of Dr. Aimée Dudley from the ISB and Dr. Patrick May from LCSB published their paper in the renowned scientific journal Nature Methods on May 12th. It describes a new method called BEST: Barcode Enabled Sequencing of Tetrads (DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2479).
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 | Vanderbilt phylogeneticists examined the reasons why large-scale tree-of-life studies are producing contradictory results and have proposed a suite of novel techniques to resolve the conflicts. ...> Full Article |
Investigators from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory today publish studies revealing many previously unknown components of an innate system that defends sex cells -- the carriers of inheritance across generations -- from the ravages of transposable genetic elements.
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 | In contrast to traditional approaches using morphological characters to delimit species, five new lichen-forming fungal species were described from what was traditionally considered a single species using genetic data exclusively. The new species can be identified using DNA barcoding. This pioneering study marks an alternative approach for discovering species and will promote effective research through correct specimen identification in closely related species groups. The study was published in the open access journal Mycokeys. ...> Full Article |
 | A George Washington University biologist and a team of researchers have created the first large-scale evolutionary family tree for every snake and lizard around the globe. ...> Full Article |
 | A carnivorous, cannibalistic tadpole may play a role in understanding the evolution and development of digestive organs, according to research from North Carolina State University. ...> Full Article |
 | From Ireland to the Balkans, Europeans are basically one big family, closely related to one another for the past thousand years, according to a new study of the DNA of people from across the continent. ...> Full Article |
When Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine paleoecologist Marco Coolen was mining through vast amounts of genetic data from the Black Sea sediment record, he was amazed about the variety of past plankton species that left behind their genetic makeup (i.e., the plankton paleome).
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Cooperative behavior is widely observed in nature, but there remains the possibility that 'cheaters' can exploit the system, with uncertain consequences for the social unit as a whole. A new study has found that a yeast colony dominated by non-producers ('cheaters') is more likely to face extinction than one consisting entirely of producers ('co-operators'). The findings are the results of the first laboratory demonstration of a full evolutionary-ecological feedback loop in a social microbial population.
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The genome sequences of the soft-shell turtle and green sea turtle offer new clues to the development and evolution of turtle?specific body plan.
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 | A recent revision of the Middle American clade of the ant genus Stenamma provides the description of 40 species, 33 of which are recognized as new to science. The extensive study, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, provides the first thorough examination of the biology and taxonomy of these ants, focusing mainly on the worker caste and describing their peculiar nesting habits. ...> Full Article |
 | Scientists have long observed that species seem to have become increasingly capable of evolving in response to changes in the environment. But computer science researchers now say that the popular explanation of competition to survive in nature may not actually be necessary for evolvability to increase. ...> Full Article |
Life on Earth may have originated not in warm tropical seas, but with weird tubes of ice -- sometimes called "sea stalactites" -- that grow downward into cold seawater near the Earth's poles, scientists are reporting. Their article on these "brinicles" appears in ACS' journal Langmuir.
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 | In many places around the world, people are living longer and are having fewer children. But that's not all. A study of people living in rural Gambia, published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 25, shows that this modern-day "demographic transition" may lead women to be taller and slimmer, too. ...> Full Article |
A team of scientists led by Richard Broughton, associate professor of biology at the University of Oklahoma, published two studies that dramatically increase understanding of fish evolution and their relationships. They integrated extensive genetic and physical information about specimens to create a new "tree of life" for fishes. The vast amount of data generated through large-scale DNA sequencing required supercomputing resources for analysis. The result is the largest and most comprehensive studies of fish phylogeny to date.
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