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…
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…
There was a time when parents of newborns were perfectly content to know only a few basic things about their babies: their height, their weight, their apgar score, and which side of the family should get the credit for making the kid so adorable. But a graduate student at the University of California, Davis named Razib Khan wanted to know…