Dinosaurs rose and fell, but one foot-long scaly creature — the tuatara — persisted. Recently, the first tuatara genome was sequenced, unlocking insights into the evolution of other reptiles, birds, dinosaurs, and even our own mammalian lineage. Continue reading Not Just Your Ordinary Lizard: The Unique Genome of the Tuatara
Researchers from John Hopkins University recently developed a newly improved gene editing tool that is extremely fast — it allows genes to be edited within just a few seconds! Continue reading New gene editing tool can edit genes within seconds
Humans are one of mammal’s top drinking champions; we even have better tolerance than elephants Continue reading Who would win a drinking competition, humans or elephants?
Current polio vaccines have been successful in nearly eradicating polio in the world. Unfortunately, there have been emerging cases of polio in recent years. To combat this, scientists have designed a new oral poliovirus vaccine that could result in a new and safer polio vaccine. Continue reading Redesigning the polio vaccine – Lessons from evolution
New research from Cedars-Sinai suggests that patients with young-onset Parkinson’s may have been born with the beginnings of the disorder. Continue reading People With Young-Onset Parkinson’s May Have Been Born With It
40 new species of fish have been found in Lake Mweru in East Africa. Breeding of related lineages may have allowed the cichlids to rapidly evolve to fill different ecological niches. Continue reading New Fish Species and Rapid Evolution Found in African Lake
Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital engineered a unique medicine to treat a young girl’s disease: they reverse engineered a blocker from her DNA to inhibit the gene causing the disease. Continue reading Individual Genetic Medicine Helps Treat Genetic Disease
CRISPR genome editing has been used to study the biology of a number of species, but its use in reptiles has been difficult to achieve. Scientists have now figured this out, and albino lizards are the product! Read Ben Andreone’s article to learn more! Continue reading Albino Lizards are the First Ever Genome Edited Reptiles
by Layla Siraj figures by Rebecca Senft Imagine if you could tell, through some combination of your environment and your genetics, what illnesses you might develop. This could give you the ability to either prevent these illnesses before they even happen or catch and treat the illnesses early enough to prevent long-lasting effects. This reality is one step closer with the release of the UK … Continue reading From Genes to Disease: the release of the UK Biobank
by Marina Watanabe figures by Elayne Fivenson Hours after giving birth, my sister sent a picture of her newborn baby to our family group text. In what I can only assume was a painkiller-induced haze, she wrote, “The baby looks exactly like me!!!” The baby did not look exactly like her. The baby, like all newborn babies, looked exactly like a potato. This idea of … Continue reading I Didn’t Get It from My Mama: Children with DNA almost exclusively from their dads