At today's backyard barbeques, we enjoy corn on the cob with hundreds of sweet juicy kernels. But if we were eating teosinte, the wild ancestor of corn, we would be lucky to enjoy a dozen kernels per ear. In fact, many of ...
Agriculture
Jul 20, 2022
0
10
The human genome is littered with "selfish genetic elements," which do not seem to benefit their hosts, but instead seek only to propagate themselves.
Evolution
Jul 6, 2022
0
94
What do bananas and cavoodles have in common? They're both lovely, yellowy and have been produced by genetic manipulation.
Molecular & Computational biology
Jun 30, 2022
0
35
The second century Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy had a grand ambition. Hoping to make sense of the motion of stars and the paths of planets, he published a magisterial treatise on the subject, ...
Evolution
Jun 6, 2022
0
452
How fast is evolution? In adaptive evolution, natural selection causes genetic changes in traits that favor the survival and reproduction of individual organisms.
Evolution
May 27, 2022
0
36
Darwinian evolution is the process by which natural selection promotes genetic changes in traits that favor survival and reproduction of individuals. How fast evolution happens depends crucially on the abundance of its "fuel": ...
Evolution
May 26, 2022
1
1092
A critical goal in genetics and evolution is predicting the effects of mutations that may happen in the future and inferring the effects of those that happened in the past. To make these predictions, scientists generally ...
Evolution
May 19, 2022
0
531
Like storm waves battering a ship, new versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have buffeted the world one after another. Recently, scientists keeping tabs on these variants noticed a trend: Many carry the same set of three mutations. ...
Biochemistry
May 17, 2022
0
130
Vaquita porpoises are on the edge of extinction, with just 10 left in their sole habitat within Mexico's Gulf of California.
Plants & Animals
May 8, 2022
0
70
Biomedical engineers at Duke University believe they have discovered the physical mechanism that causes high doses of antibiotics to promote the spread of antibiotic resistance between bacteria.
Evolution
Apr 5, 2022
0
71
