Genetics
- Humans
DNA indicates how ancient migrations shaped South Asian languages and farming
Farming in the region may have sprung up locally, while herders from afar sparked language changes.
- Anthropology
This ancient Denisovan finger bone is surprisingly humanlike
Despite Neandertal ties, extinct hominids called Denisovans had a touching link to humans, a new study finds.
- Genetics
There’s no evidence that a single ‘gay gene’ exists
Many genetic factors with small effects combine with one’s environment to influence sexual behavior, researchers say.
- Humans
India’s Skeleton Lake contains the bones of mysterious European migrants
Not all of the hundreds of skeletons found at a north Indian lake are from the same place or period. What killed any of these people is still unknown.
- Life
CRISPR enters its first human clinical trials
The gene editor will be used in lab dishes in cancer and blood disorder trials, and to directly edit a gene in human eyes in a blindness therapy test.
- Animals
There’s more to pufferfish than that goofy spiked balloon
Three odd things about pufferfishes: how they mate, how they bite and what’s up with no fish scales?
- Genetics
This gene may help worms live longer, but not healthier
Antiaging therapies may have trade-offs, research on worms suggests.
- Animals
Ground beetle genitals have the genetic ability to get strange. They don’t
A new look at the genetics of sex organs finds underpinnings of conflicts over genital size.
- Anthropology
Ancient DNA reveals the origins of the Philistines
A mysterious Biblical-era population may have fled Bronze Age calamities.
- Health & Medicine
Antioxidants may encourage the spread of lung cancer rather than prevent it
Antioxidants protect lung cancer cells from free radicals, but also spur metastasis, two new studies suggest.
- Genetics
DNA reveals a European Neandertal lineage that lasted 80,000 years
Ancient DNA from cave fossils in Belgium and Germany shows an unbroken genetic line of the extinct hominids emerged at least 120,000 years ago.
- Genetics
DNA confirms a weird Greenland whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid
DNA analysis of a skull indicates that the animal had a narwhal mother and beluga father.
