According to an analysis of the nuclear DNA of polar bears, brown bears and black bears published in Science, polar bears evolved around 600,000 years ago, making them five times older than previously thought. This extra time explains how they have managed to adapt so well to the conditions of the arctic.
evolution archive.
Following on from the creation of a cell based on a synthetic genome and the synthetic mouse mitochondrial genome in 2010, and proteins based on ‘unnatural’ DNA sequences and the poem inserted as a synthetic gene into a bacterium in 2011, the next step towards synthetic life is the creation of a synthetic genetic polymer, XNA, that is capable of heredity and evolution.
Under the Baltimore classification, viruses can be classified into DNA viruses and RNA viruses – but this may be overturned by the discovery of a virus with a DNA-RNA hybrid genome, according to a paper published in Biology Direct.
Are you a thrill-seeker? Do you hang-glide at the weekend or bungee-jump on holiday? You have a lot more in common with bees than you think, according to a paper published in Science magazine.
There have been rumours in the world of science that the male chromosome – the Y chromosome – was going to disappear at some point of human evolution, in anything from 100,000 to five million years. While the region of the Y chromosome that is specific to human males only carries 3% of the genes that it once did, loss of the genes seems to have stopped millions of years, according to a paper in Nature. So males can breathe a sigh of relief – to misquote Mark Twain, the report of the death of the Y chromosome was an exaggeration.
Genome Engineering is featured in the 44th Carnival of Evolution at the Atavism
Chelonoidis elephantopus, one of the species of Galápagos tortoises that helped Charles Darwin chisel out his theory of evolution, was thought to have become extinct not long after Charles Darwin’s 1835 voyage to the Galápagos Islands. But according to genetic research published in Current Biology, it may live on.
To celebrate the New Year, we bring you the top ten posts of 2011.
On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… eight maids-a-milking. In 2009, researchers sequenced the genome of a female Hereford cow, and published the results in Science.
The genomes of the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrines) and saker falcon (Falco cherrug) have been announced at the Third International Festival of Falconry. The sequencing project, part of the Falcon Genome Project, is a collaboration between BGI in China, the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University and the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital.
