Money and Finance
- Human Evolution: The Neanderthal In The Family
Link to article: Human evolution: The Neanderthal in the familyThirty years after the study of ancient DNA began, it promises to upend our view of the past. Before ancient DNA exposed the sexual proclivities of Neanderthals or the ancestry of the...
- 'living Fossil' Coelacanth Genome Sequenced
The genetic secrets of a "living fossil" have been revealed by scientists. Researchers sequenced the genome of the coelacanth: a deep-sea fish that closely resembles its ancestors, which lived at least 300 million years ago. The study found that some...
- Publication Of The Gorilla Genome Opens Window Onto Human Evolution
Found via the RDFRS. The sequence of the gorilla genome is published today, completing the set for the living great apes. The findings provide a unique perspective on our own origins and are an important resource for research into human evolution and...
- What’s A Man?
Studies of brain genetics are starting to reveal what makes humans human THE problem with understanding human uniqueness is precisely that it is unique. Though the proper study of mankind may be man, that study will yield little if there is no reference...
- Soon, $1,000 Will Map Your Genes
SAN FRANCISCO—The quest to harness the power of DNA to develop personalized medicine is on the threshold of a major milestone: the $1,000 genome sequencing. Life Technologies Corp., a Carlsbad, Calif., genomics company, plans to introduce Tuesday a...
Money and Finance
Across 1,000 genomes, rarities abound
Every person’s genetic instruction book is a trove of never-before-seen genetic variants, according to an ongoing effort to map human genetic diversity.
In recent years, scientists have discovered that humans carry far more rare genetic variants than anyone ever thought. Now, a major effort to map the diversity of humans’ genetic makeup — called the 1000 Genomes Project — has turned up even more variety than researchers had expected. The project has now lived up to its name, completing a comprehensive sampling of 1,092 people from 14 different populations around the world, an international consortium of researchers reports in the Nov. 1 Nature.
Among the anonymous people sampled, researchers found 38 million single DNA unit changes, known as SNPs. Of those, about two-thirds are newly discovered and many are rare, found in less than 0.5 percent of people. These variants, along with small and large insertions and deletions and rearrangements of DNA, may affect health and disease risk and can help scientists trace humans’ migrations around the globe.
“The magnitude of rare variation observed in human populations has really been driven home to everyone,” says Nancy Cox, a quantitative human geneticist at the University of Chicago. Large numbers of rare variants in the 1,092 study participants indicate that human population growth has been “superexponential,” Cox says.
- Human Evolution: The Neanderthal In The Family
Link to article: Human evolution: The Neanderthal in the familyThirty years after the study of ancient DNA began, it promises to upend our view of the past. Before ancient DNA exposed the sexual proclivities of Neanderthals or the ancestry of the...
- 'living Fossil' Coelacanth Genome Sequenced
The genetic secrets of a "living fossil" have been revealed by scientists. Researchers sequenced the genome of the coelacanth: a deep-sea fish that closely resembles its ancestors, which lived at least 300 million years ago. The study found that some...
- Publication Of The Gorilla Genome Opens Window Onto Human Evolution
Found via the RDFRS. The sequence of the gorilla genome is published today, completing the set for the living great apes. The findings provide a unique perspective on our own origins and are an important resource for research into human evolution and...
- What’s A Man?
Studies of brain genetics are starting to reveal what makes humans human THE problem with understanding human uniqueness is precisely that it is unique. Though the proper study of mankind may be man, that study will yield little if there is no reference...
- Soon, $1,000 Will Map Your Genes
SAN FRANCISCO—The quest to harness the power of DNA to develop personalized medicine is on the threshold of a major milestone: the $1,000 genome sequencing. Life Technologies Corp., a Carlsbad, Calif., genomics company, plans to introduce Tuesday a...