Scientists looking to measure the biodiversity of wild animals have added a surprising tool to their arsenal—blood-sucking leeches.
Plants & Animals
Apr 05, 2022
1
99
The air in a zoo is full of smells, from the fish used for feed to the manure from the grazing herbivores, but now we know it is also full of DNA from the animals living there. In the journal Current Biology on January 6th, ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 06, 2022
0
300
A powerful genome editing tool can be deployed as an ace DNA detective, able to sniff out DNA snippets that signal viral infections, cancer, or even defective genes.
Biotechnology
Feb 15, 2018
1
193
(Phys.org)—A large international team of researchers has found that Neolithic hunter-gatherers living in several parts of Europe interbred with farmers from the Near East. In their paper published in the journal Nature, ...
Researchers have developed a new method to retrieve hominin DNA from cave sediments—even in the absence of skeletal remains.
Archaeology
Apr 27, 2017
4
2474
Humanity may soon generate more data than hard drives or magnetic tape can handle, a problem that has scientists turning to nature's age-old solution for information-storage—DNA.
Biotechnology
Mar 02, 2017
10
10738
Residents of the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia share fragments of genetic code with two extinct human species. That's the key finding of a new study published March 17 in the journal Science.
Archaeology
Mar 17, 2016
3
1464
It sounds like something straight out of a "Hunger Games" novel: The rulers of a sprawling empire select beautiful children from throughout their vast territories and kill them in a ritualistic event to reinforce their power.
Archaeology
Nov 14, 2015
7
2075
More than 300 years ago, three African-born slaves died on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. No written records memorialized their fate, and their names and precise ethnic background remained a mystery. For centuries, ...
Biotechnology
Mar 09, 2015
4
80
Ribonucleotides, units of RNA, can become embedded in genomic DNA during processes such as DNA replication and repair, affecting the stability of the genome by contributing to DNA fragility and mutability. Scientists have ...
Biotechnology
Jan 26, 2015
0
30
