For breeders of cassava, a staple food for hundreds of millions in the tropics, producing improved varieties has been getting harder over time. A team at Cornell used genomic analysis of cassava varieties and wild relatives ...
Biotechnology
Apr 28, 2017
6
685
Some corals live to be hundreds, and even thousands, of years old. They were born with genes that were successful back in their parent's generation, so how can these old corals still be successful now? Especially in a changing ...
Evolution
Mar 10, 2023
0
194
Cancer first develops as a single cell going rogue, with mutations that trigger aggressive growth at all costs to the health of the organism. But if cancer cells were accumulating harmful mutations faster than they could ...
Evolution
Jan 15, 2019
2
255
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
Human evolution can seem like a phenomenon of the distant past which applies only to our ancestors living millions of years ago. But human evolution is ongoing. To evolve simply means that mutations – the accidental changes ...
Evolution
Sep 12, 2017
0
52
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 ...
Biotechnology
Jul 14, 2017
8
80
We are all mutants. Every characteristic that defines our species is the result of a genetic mutation somewhere in the history of evolution. And the same is true for every other organism on the planet. Yet more often than ...
Biotechnology
Apr 16, 2018
0
10
About 1.5 to 2 billion years ago, the great evolutionary 'big fish, little fish' engulfment occurred. Somehow, scientists think, one bacteria swallowed another, creating a new type of cell, the eukaryotes.
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 13, 2016
0
192
Bird species that breed with several sexual partners have fewer harmful mutations, according to a study led by the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath. The study, published in Evolution, shows for the first ...
Evolution
Jan 24, 2023
0
47
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
