One of the most important questions in biology is how rapidly new proteins evolve in organisms. Proteins are the building blocks that carry out the basic functions of life. As the genes that produce them change, the proteins ...
Ecology
Mar 11, 2019
0
179
Paleontologists at the University of Chicago have discovered the first detailed fossil of a hagfish, the slimy, eel-like carrion feeders of the ocean. The 100-million-year-old fossil helps answer questions about when these ...
Archaeology
Jan 21, 2019
5
568
An analysis of Twitter data from the U.S. shows that social media usage largely mirrors daily work schedules and school calendars. The data reflect the amount of "social jet lag" caused when social demands make people wake ...
Social Sciences
Nov 15, 2018
0
52
A multi-center study of the genetic remains of people who settled thousands of years ago in the Andes Mountains of South America reveals a complex picture of human adaptation from early settlement, to a split about 9,000 ...
Archaeology
Nov 8, 2018
6
167
Duplicate copies of a gene shared by male and female fruit flies have evolved to resolve competing demands between the sexes. New genetic analysis by researchers at the University of Chicago describes how these copies have ...
Evolution
Feb 19, 2018
0
135
Thousands of short RNA molecules with diverse genetic sequences serve as security guards to identify and silence attempts to invade the genome, such as DNA inserted by viruses or parasitic elements known as transposons.
Biotechnology
Feb 1, 2018
0
109
Female swallowtail butterflies do something a lot of butterflies do to survive: they mimic wing patterns, shapes and colors of other species that are toxic to predators. Some - but not all - swallowtail species have evolved ...
Evolution
Nov 7, 2017
0
136
Scientists at the University of Chicago studied a massive set of genetic variants of an ancient protein, discovering a myriad of other ways that evolution could have turned out and revealing a central role for chance in evolutionary ...
Evolution
Sep 13, 2017
0
559
Two 160 million-year-old mammal fossils discovered in China show that the forerunners of mammals in the Jurassic Period evolved to glide and live in trees. With long limbs, long hand and foot fingers, and wing-like membranes ...
Archaeology
Aug 9, 2017
0
1954
Analysis of a 3.3 million-year-old fossil skeleton reveals the most complete spinal column of any early human relative, including vertebrae, neck and rib cage. The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National ...
Archaeology
May 22, 2017
3
2520
