Large flesh-eating dinosaurs evolved into small flying birds, but it did not happen overnight. An international team of scientists on Thursday described an extraordinary evolutionary process that unfolded over a period of 50 million years in which a lineage of carnivorous dinosaurs shrank steadily and acquired numerous traits that led to the first appearance of birds. The researchers, using techniques…
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…
ISG Associate Professor, Aaron Panofsky, is pleased to announce that his book Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics is now out! Behavior genetics has always been a breeding ground for controversies. From the “criminal chromosome” to the “gay gene,” claims about the influence of genes like these have led to often vitriolic national debates about race, class,…
A team of scientists from around the world led by Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University in St. Louis has completed the genome sequence of the common marmoset – the first sequence of a New World Monkey – providing new information about the marmoset’s unique rapid reproductive system, physiology and growth, shedding new light on primate biology and evolution.…
If you consider your friends family, you may be on to something. A study from the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University finds that friends who are not biologically related still resemble each other genetically. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is coauthored by James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political…