A new technique successfully takes on a longstanding challenge in DNA sequencing – determining whether a particular genetic sequence comes from an individual's mother or father. The method, described in a Ludwig Cancer Research study in Nature Biotechnology, promises to accelerate studies of how genes contribute to disease, improve the process of matching donors with organs and help scientists better understand human migration patterns.
Only a few genetic changes are needed to spur the evolution of new species—even if the original populations are still in contact and exchanging genes. Once started, however, evolutionary divergence evolves rapidly, ultimately leading to fully genetically isolated species, report scientists from the University of Chicago in the Oct 31 Cell Reports.
Meteorite bombardment left large craters that contained water and chemical building blocks for life, which ultimately led to the first organisms.
Evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton predicted that organisms ought to evolve the ability to discriminate degrees of kinship so as to refine their ability to direct help to individuals with whom they shared the most genes. But two WUSTL biologists point out that there seem to be many cases where “a veil of ignorance” prevents organisms from gaining this kind of information, forcing them to consider a situation from the perspective of all members of their group instead of solely from their own perspective or that of their close kin.
For the first time ever, scientists have documented a widespread extinction of bees that occurred 65 million years ago, concurrent with the massive event that wiped out land dinosaurs and many flowering plants. Their findings, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, could shed light on the current decline in bee species.
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have, for the first time, taken chimpanzee and bonobo skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of cell that has the ability to form any other cell or tissue in the body.
Researchers, using quantitative methods focused on the shape of dental fossils, find that none of the usual suspects fits the expected profile of an ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.
Ohio State University researcher Tim Berra would argue that Charles Darwin has a second legacy, marked by personal tragedy and highlighted by pride in accomplishment – the stories of the 10 children born to him and his wife, Emma Wedgwood, his first cousin.
Scientists have proposed that the most recently discovered ancient human relatives – the Denisovans ¬¬– somehow managed to cross one of the world’s most prominent marine barriers in Indonesia, and later interbred with modern humans moving through the area on the way to Australia and New Guinea.
Ancient DNA recovered from a time series of skeletons in Germany spanning 4,000 years of prehistory has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern-day Europeans.
The dramatic explosion of flowering plant species that occurred about 100 million years ago was thought to have been good news for evolving mammals. But new research suggests that wasn't necessarily the case.
Highlighting an important but unexplored area of evolution, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found evidence that, over hundreds of millions of years, an essential protein has evolved chiefly by changing how it moves, rather than by changing its basic molecular structure. The work has implications not only for the understanding of protein evolution, but also for the design of antibiotics and other drugs that target the protein in question.
UT Austin anthropologists confirm a direct link between upright two-legged (bipedal) walking and the position of the foramen magnum, a hole in the base of the skull that transmits the spinal cord.
The overwhelming urge that drives many pregnant women to clean, organize and get life in order—otherwise known as nesting—is not irrational, but an adaptive behaviour stemming from humans’ evolutionary past.
A new study led by Adelaide researchers has estimated, for the first time, the rates of evolution during the “Cambrian explosion” when most modern animal groups appeared between 540 and 520 million years ago.
An important discovery has been made concerning the possible inventory of molecules available to the early Earth. Scientists led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, found that the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, which exploded in a blazing fireball over California last year, contains organic molecules not previously found in any meteorites.
The story of the Uruguayan rugby team, whose airplane crashed in the Andes Mountains in 1972 and had to resort to cannibalism to survive until their rescue, has strong roots in the history of human evolution, according to a Southeastern Louisiana University psychology professor.
College biology textbooks cater to the needs of pre-med majors and not those of the majority of students who take introductory science classes, a new study reveals.
Darwin referred to the origin of species as "that mystery of mysteries," and even today, more than 150 years later, evolutionary biologists cannot fully explain how new animals and plants arise.
Glimpses of the nursery of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago are coming from an unlikely venue almost 1 billion miles away, according to the leader of an effort to understand Titan, one of the most unusual moons in the solar system. In the talk here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, he said that Titan is providing insights into the evolution of life.
Readers will glean hundreds of surprising pieces of information from How We Do It, a new book by Robert Martin of the University of Chicago and the Field Museum.
New research from Washington University in St. Louis offers compelling evidence that a well-connected core brain network based in the lateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex — parts of the brain most changed evolutionarily since our common ancestor with chimpanzees — contains “flexible hubs” that coordinate the brain’s responses to novel cognitive challenges.
Using advanced analysis of DNA from Y chromosomes from men all over the world, scientists have shed new light on the mystery of when and how a few early human ancestors started to give rise to the incredible diversity of today’s population.
New research published in Nature and led by Amy Balanoff, a Research Instructor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, provides evidence that dinosaurs evolved the brainpower necessary for flight well before they actually took to the air as birds. “Evolutionary origins of the avian brain” takes a comprehensive look at the so-called “bird brain.” Contrary to the cliché, the term describes a relatively enlarged brain that has the capacity required for flight and was present in one of the earliest known birds, Archaeopteryx.
Dinosaurs had brains wired for flight long before some of them flew, according to a study published in Nature. The study refutes a common notion that the bird's large brain evolved for the purpose of flight.
A science team that includes researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has linked increasing oxygen levels and the rise and evolution of carnivores (meat eaters) as the force behind a broad explosion of animal species and body structures millions of years ago.
The chemical components crucial to the start of life on Earth may have primed and protected each other in never-before-realized ways, according to new research. It could mean a simpler scenario for how that first spark of life came about on the planet.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine have found that a genetic process among the many species of rodents could have significant implications regarding our assumptions about sex determination and the pace of evolution.
The digestive tract is home to a vast colony of bacteria, as well as the myriad viruses that prey upon them. Because the bacteria species vary from person to person, so does this viral population, the virome. By closely analyzing the virome of one individual over two-and-a-half years, researchers have uncovered new insights on the virome can change and evolve – and why the virome of one person can vary so greatly from that of another.
University of Texas anthropologists find ancient Miocene ape was physically incapable of walking on two legs.
The pulmonary vasculature, the blood vessels that connect the heart to the lung, develops even in the absence of the lung. Mice in which lung development is inhibited still have pulmonary blood vessels, which revealed to the researchers that cardiac progenitors, or stem cells, are essential for cardiopulmonary co-development.
Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, which first appears in the fossil record a mere 11 million years after an extinction that wiped out more than 90 percent of the planet's vertebrate species.
Contrary to current scientific understanding, it appears that our microbial companions play an important role in their hosts' evolution. A new study provides the first direct evidence that these microbes can contribute to the origin of new species by reducing the viability of hybrids produced between males and females of different species.
Rapid tooth replacement by sauropods, the largest dinosaurs in the fossil record, likely contributed to their evolutionary success, according to a research paper by Stony Brook University paleontologist Michael D’Emic, PhD, and colleagues. Published in PLOS ONE, the study also hypothesizes that differences in tooth replacement rates among the giant herbivores likely meant their diets varied, an important factor that allowed multiple species to share the same ecosystems for several million years.
In Nature this week, Santa Fe Institute External Professor Andreas Wagner and University of Zurich colleague Aditya Barve, by simulating changes in an organism’s metabolism, show that most traits may emerge as non-crucial "exaptations" rather than as selection-advantageous adaptations.
By studying rapidly evolving bacteria as they diversify and compete under varying environmental conditions, researchers have shown that temporal niches are important to maintaining biodiversity in natural systems.
You are what you eat – and so are your offspring. And in the title bout featuring protein versus sugar, protein is the winner. That’s what a researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found while studying the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as part of a multi-institutional team.
George Washington University researcher, in upcoming Nature study, collected motion data from baseball players to uncover why humans are such good throwers.
Historian from National University of Singapore dispels myths and retraces the story of evolution theory co-founders Darwin and Wallace.
Seeds gobbled by birds and dispersed across the landscape tend to fare better than those that fall near parent plants. Now it turns out it might not just be the trip through the air that's important, but also the inches-long trip through the bird.
A Cornell University study offers further proof that the divergence of humans from chimpanzees some 4 million to 6 million years ago was profoundly influenced by mutations to DNA sequences that play roles in turning genes on and off.
New research sheds light on how the tropics came to be teeming with species while the poles harbor relatively few. Furthermore, it confirms that the tropics have been and continue to be the Earth’s engine of biodiversity.
Case study of Leavenworthia suggests that loss of complex traits may be reversed
Efforts to restore sturgeon in the Great Lakes region have received a lot of attention in recent years, and many of the news stories note that the prehistoric-looking fish are "living fossils" virtually unchanged for millions of years.
U.S. paleontologists led by Jason Head of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln announced fossils of giant lizard Barbaturex morrisoni this week. Their analysis shows that it is one of the biggest known lizards ever to have lived on land. They've named the creature after Doors lead singer Jim Morrison.
A new study by researchers at Wake Forest University shows Bertholdia trigona, a species of tiger moth found in the Arizona desert, can tell if an echo-locating bat is going to attack it well before the predator swoops in for the kill – making the intuitive, tiny-winged insect a master of self-preservation.
Most apes eat leaves and fruits from trees and shrubs. New studies spearheaded by the University of Utah show that human ancestors expanded their menu 3.5 million years ago, adding tropical grasses and sedges to an ape-like diet and setting the stage for our modern diet of grains, grasses, and meat and dairy from grazing animals.
Researchers have found that a 260-million-year-old reptile is the earliest known version of the turtle. The discovery fills a large gap in the turtle fossil record and provide clues on how the turtle's unique shell evolved.
A novel disease in songbirds has rapidly evolved to become more harmful to its host on at least two separate occasions in just two decades, according to a new study. The research provides a real-life model to help understand how diseases that threaten humans can be expected to change in virulence as they emerge.
A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth. The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth.
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