Becoming human: An ancient genome perspective

Writing a commentary in the 50th anniversary issue of Cell, Fu Qiaomei and E. Andrew Bennett, both of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explored the ...

Bioinformatician presents the first map of the microverse

What defines the habitat—the ecological niche—of a microorganism? It is a combination of environmental factors such as temperature, moisture, and nutrient content. But the exact contribution of each of these factors is ...

Plants with pocket-sized genomes

Members of Genlisea, a genus of carnivorous plants, possess the smallest genomes known in plants. To elucidate genomic evolution in the group as a whole, researchers have now surveyed a wider range of species, and found a ...

New limits to functional portion of human genome reported

An evolutionary biologist at the University of Houston has published new calculations that indicate no more than 25 percent of the human genome is functional. That is in stark contrast to suggestions by scientists with the ...

How cells measure themselves

Ever since scientists discovered cells under the microscope more than 350 years ago, they have noted that each type of cell has a characteristic size. From tiny bacteria to inches-long neurons, size matters for how cells ...

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