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To Avoid Interbreeding, Monkeys Have Undergone Evolution in Facial Appearance

Old World monkeys have undergone a remarkable evolution in facial appearance as a way of avoiding interbreeding with closely related and geographically proximate species, researchers from New York University and the University of Exeter have found. Their research provides the best evidence to date for the role of visual cues as a barrier to breeding across species. “Evolution produces adaptations…

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Will Genome Sequencing Make Us Smarter About Dealing With Diseases in Our Genes—Or Just More Anxious?

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…

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Single Dose of Century-Old Drug Approved for Sleeping Sickness Reverses Autism-Like Symptoms in Mice

In a further test of a novel theory that suggests autism is the consequence of abnormal cell communication, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that an almost century-old drug approved for treating sleeping sickness also restores normal cellular signaling in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the neurological disorder in animals that…

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The Games Genes Play: Algorithm Helps Explain Sex in Evolution

What do you get when you mix theorists in computer science with evolutionary biologists? You get an algorithm to explain sex. It turns out that 155 years after Charles Darwin first published “On the Origin of Species,” vexing questions remain about key aspects of evolution, such as how sexual recombination and natural selection produced the teeming diversity of life that…

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