A typo appearing in the draft of a novel is no great calamity. Nature, however, is often less forgiving of errors. A change in just one letter of the genetic code can have catastrophic consequences for human health.
Biotechnology
Feb 27, 2020
0
15
Oxidative stress affects all living organisms, and the damage it causes is believed to play a part in cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and a number of other health conditions. Some animals have developed remarkable, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Feb 18, 2020
0
10
One of the most controversial hypotheses for the origin of the human language faculty is the evolutionary conjecture that language arose instantaneously in humans through a single gene mutation. `
Evolution
Feb 12, 2020
5
230
Some 4,000 years ago, a tiny population of woolly mammoths died out on Wrangel Island, a remote Arctic refuge off the coast of Siberia.
Archaeology
Feb 7, 2020
1
3720
Post-translational modification is the process whereby proteins are modified after their initial biosynthesis. Modification can take many forms, including enzymatic cleavage of the protein or the addition of sugars, lipids, ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 5, 2020
0
10
A fast, inexpensive yet sensitive technique to detect cancer markers is bringing researchers closer to a "liquid biopsy"—a test using a small sample of blood or serum to detect cancer, rather than the invasive tissue sampling ...
Biochemistry
Dec 18, 2019
0
627
A new bioinformatics tool, MHcut, developed by researchers in Kyoto, Japan, and Montreal, Canada, reveals that a natural repair system for DNA damage, microhomology-mediated end joining, is probably far more common in humans ...
Biotechnology
Oct 28, 2019
0
5
The fruit flies in Noah Whiteman's lab may be hazardous to your health.
Plants & Animals
Oct 2, 2019
6
305
In the version of evolutionary theory most of us are familiar with, randomly occurring variation in traits, caused by mutations in our DNA, can be fixed in a population through natural selection. However, writing in Epigenetics ...
Evolution
Sep 10, 2019
0
325
For the past few hundred years, the colorful hair and unique patterns of the so-called "Fancy Mouse" have made them the stars of pet shows in Japan and beyond. Now, scientists have finally revealed the true cause of the genetic ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 27, 2019
0
32
