Tag: genetics
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Just… because!
It can be hard to dispute the common adage ‘survival of the fittest’. After all, ‘most of the genes in the genome are there because they’re doing something good,’ says a researcher. But, she says, ‘others are just there because they’ve figured out a way to be there.’ (1) We tend to find reasons for…
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Genetics. The greatest farce?
DNA may not be life’s instruction book — just a jumbled list of ingredients: The common view of heredity is that all information passed down from one generation to the next is stored in an organism’s DNA. But one researcher suggests this might not be so. In two new papers, he argues DNA is just…
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Genes. Not important.
One of the great puzzles of evolutional biology is what induced certain living creatures to abandon solitary existence in favor of living in collaborative societies, as seen in the case of ants and other social, colony-forming insects. A major characteristic of so-called eusocial species is the division of labor between queens that lay eggs and…
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Cognitive ability. Longevity.
Investigators at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research discovered dozens of new genetic variations associated with a person’s general cognitive ability. The findings, which were published online today in Cell Reports, have the potential to help researchers develop more targeted treatment for cognitive and memory disorders. “For the first time, we were able to use…
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Health. Disease. Blurry lines…
Our genome is made up of 20,000 genes, all of which may cause disease. At present, 4,141 genes have been identified as being responsible for genetic abnormalities, leaving around 16,000 genes with unknown implication in disease. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, — working in collaboration with scientists from Pakistan and the USA…
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