Like many novel technologies in this age of TED Talks and Silicon Valley triumphalism, synthetic biology—synbio for short—floats on a sea of hype. One of its founding scientists, Boston University biomedical engineer James Collins, has called it “genetic engineering on steroids.” Whereas garden-variety genetic engineers busy themselves moving genes from one organism into another—to create tomatoes that don’t bruise easily,…
It’s not another tall tale: Evolutionary biologists have developed a new understanding of the genetic basis of short stature in humans. Also known as the pygmy phenotype, a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that this trait has evolved several times over the course of human history. “We have found the strongest evidence…
Most people gradually recover from trauma, but a small fraction of individuals develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — prompting scientists to look for the biological underpinnings of this extreme response to traumatic situations such as warfare, car accidents and natural disasters. Research published on 11 August in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identifies up to 334 genes that…
Recently, Malaysian herpetologist Juliana Senawi puzzled over an unfamiliar orange-striped, yellow-speckled frog she’d live-caught in swampland on the Malay Peninsula. She showed the frog to Chan Kin Onn, a fellow herpetologist pursuing his doctorate at the University of Kansas. They wondered—was this striking frog with an appearance unlike others nearby in the central peninsula an unidentified species? Extensive genetic analysis…
ISG Associate Professor, Hannah Landecker, will be speaking at – EPIGENomics and Health Policy: Challenges and Opportunities December 1-3, 2014 IEO, via Adamello 16, Milan, Italy INTRODUCTION The rise of epigenomics has been exponential over the last decade, in terms of scientific breakthroughs and technological advances as well as in the public salience of its discourse. Its impact is particularly promising…
The classic definition of a biological species is the ability to breed within its group, and the inability to breed outside it. For instance, breeding a horse and a donkey may result in a live mule offspring, but mules are nearly always sterile due to genomic incompatibility between the two species. The vast majority of the time, mating across species…