Genetics

  1. Genetics

    How you bet is affected by your genes

    When betting, people's decisions are influenced by variations in a set of genes that regulate the brain chemical dopamine.

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  2. Animals

    Feedback

    Readers discuss mammal milk, ancient human genetics and hand washing techniques.

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  3. Genetics

    Chimp and human lineages may have split twice as long ago as thought

    New estimates of chimpanzee mutation rates suggest humans and chimps last shared a common ancestor 13 million years ago.

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  4. Genetics

    Wool pulled from sheep’s genetic code

    Sheep's genetic sequence, comprised of 2.6 billion base pairs, offers clues to how the animals maintain extra woolly coats and when they evolved from other livestock.

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  5. Genetics

    Bromine found to be essential to animal life

    Fruit flies deprived of the element bromine can’t make normal connective tissue that supports cells and either don’t hatch or die as larvae.

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  6. Genetics

    Blind mole-rats are loaded with anticancer genes

    Genes of the long-lived blind mole-rat help explain how the animal evades cancer and why it lost vision.

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  7. Chemistry

    Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step

    Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.

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  8. Microbes

    Irish potato famine microbe traced to Mexico

    The pathogen that triggered the Irish potato famine in the 1840s originated in central Mexico, not the Andes, as some studies had suggested.

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  9. Genetics

    How a genetic quirk makes hair naturally blond

    Natural blonds don’t need hair dye. They have a variation on a genetic enhancer that dampens pigment production in their hair follicles, scientists say.

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  10. Life

    Flightless birds’ history upset by ancient DNA

    The closest known relatives of New Zealand’s small, flightless kiwis were Madagascar’s elephant birds, so ancestors must have done some flying rather than just drifting with continents.

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  11. Genetics

    Qatari people carry genetic trace of early migrants out of Africa

    Qatari genomes carry shards of DNA that date back 60,000 years, when humans began to leave Africa.

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  12. Genetics

    Spider genomes give hints about venom, silk production

    The genetic codes identify new proteins that may be involved in making and turning on toxins in venom and also those used to make spider silk.

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