A new study suggests that the large majority of noncoding DNA, which is abundant in many living things, may not actually be needed for complex life. The clues lie in the genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant, Utricularia gibba. The U. gibba genome is the smallest ever to be sequenced from a complex, multicellular plant. The researchers who sequenced it say that 97…
ISG faculty Patrick Allard published a paper, “A C. elegans Screening Platform for the Rapid Assessment of Chemical Disruption of Germline Function” scheduled to appear in the June edition of Environmental Health Perspectives. Abstract: Despite the developmental impact of chromosome segregation errors, we lack the tools to assess environmental effects on the integrity of the germline in animals. Here, we report the development of an…
In the middle of the South Atlantic, there’s a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that they’ve found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves. The DNA, from tiny, one-celled…
From Ireland to Turkey, Europeans are all related, sharing a link with ancestors who were alive just 1,000 years ago, according to a new genetic study. Peter Ralph and Graham Coop of the University of California used genomic data for 2,257 Europeans to conduct the first such study of an entire continent. In recent years, genetics has combined with archaeology and…
Artist and Phd student, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, finds and photographs DNA samples out in public, collecting everything from hair to chewed gum and cigarettes. She then sequences the DNA, extracting information about certain traits related to outward appearance (e.g. gender, eye-color, ancestry). Dewey-Hagborg then feeds this information into a computer program that uses the details to create a 3D model of…
Dr Helena Cronin, co-director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, discusses “sexuality after genetics”. Why are males and females so different? Why would one identical twin be gay while the other is straight? Dr Cronin, who specialises in the genetics of gender and sexuality, also explains why she thinks there…