Genetic Archaeology News - September 2008 Archives

From One Laying To Another, The Female Collembolan Adapts Its Eggs To Environmental Constraints (9/29/2008)

Researchers have demonstrated the adaptive nature of the reproductive behavior of certain arthropods from one laying to another, in the same female. ...> Full Article

Genetic damage in minibacteria in aphids and ants repaired by faulty copying (9/28/2008)

Researchers are presenting experimental findings that show that repeated errors in the conversion of DNA to protein save the function of the damaged genes ...> Full Article

'Redesigned Hammer' That Forged Evolution Of Pregnancy In Mammals Found (9/27/2008)

Researchers have shown that the origin and evolution of the placenta and uterus in mammals is associated with evolutionary changes in a single regulatory protein ...> Full Article

Insight into the evolution of parasitism (9/23/2008)

Molecular biologists have decoded the genome of a nematode living in beetles ...> Full Article

Genetic Fishing Expedition Yields Surprising Catch Important To Mammals (9/21/2008)

investigators report the discovery of master controllers of a gene critical to human and all mammalian development by trawling, implausibly enough, through anonymous genetic sequences using tiny zebrafish embryos. ...> Full Article

Research pushes back crop development 10,000 years (9/20/2008)

A new mathematical model that shows how plant agriculture actually began much earlier than first thought, well before the Younger Dryas (the last "big freeze" with glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere). It also shows that useful gene types could have actually taken thousands of years to become stable. ...> Full Article

From mice to men, evidence of evolutionary selection is found in 544 genes in analysis going back 80 million years (9/18/2008)

By comparing the genomes of humans and five other mammals, Cornell researchers have identified 544 genes that have been shaped by positive selection over millions of years of evolution. ...> Full Article

DNA study reveals evolution of beer yeasts (9/12/2008)

The research offers a fascinating glimpse into the early history of beer brewing, as well as an unheralded sneak peek at the early days of the evolution of a new yeast species. ...> Full Article

Computational Biochemist Uncovers A Molecular Clue To Evolution (9/11/2008)

A researcher who uses high-powered computers to map the workings of proteins has uncovered a mechanism that gives scientists a better understanding of how evolution occurs at the molecular level. ...> Full Article

Molecular evolution is echoed in bat ears (9/7/2008)

Echolocation may have evolved more than once in bats ...> Full Article

Significance of milk in development of culture to be studied (9/7/2008)

Researchers too study when and where The capacity to drink and tolerate milk emerged and what it entailed. ...> Full Article

Scientists develop new method to investigate origin of life (9/6/2008)

Researchers have developed a new computational method that they say will help them to understand how life began on Earth ...> Full Article

DNA shows that last woolly mammoths had North American roots (9/5/2008)

In a surprising reversal of conventional wisdom, a DNA-based study has revealed that the last of the woolly mammoths -- which lived between 40,000 and 4,000 years ago -- had roots that were exclusively North American. ...> Full Article

Researchers find 'junk DNA' may have triggered (9/5/2008)

Out of the 3 billion genetic letters that spell out the human genome, scientists have found a handful that may have contributed to the evolutionary changes in human limbs that enabled us to manipulate tools and walk upright. ...> Full Article

New research challenges long-held assumptions of flightless bird evolution (9/4/2008)

Large flightless birds of the southern continents - African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi - do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed. ...> Full Article

Researchers locate geographic origins from DNA (9/3/2008)

Using DNA to ID European ancestry ...> Full Article