The "jumping genes" of maize have finally been mapped by an international team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The discovery could ultimately benefit the breeding ...
Biotechnology
Aug 24, 2017
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204
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers working at Harvard University has developed a new whole-genome amplification method that outperforms other methods currently being used. In their paper published in the journal Science, ...
Nature is full of parasites—organisms that flourish and proliferate at the expense of another species. Surprisingly, these same competing roles of parasite and host can be found in the microscopic molecular world of the ...
General Physics
Nov 14, 2016
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3006
Small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, with enormous eyes and an appetite for meat, tarsiers are an anomaly of nature. They are also our distant cousins, according to scientists at Washington University School of ...
Biotechnology
Oct 6, 2016
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UNC School of Medicine researchers discovered that the major developmental function of heterochromatin – a form of tight DNA packaging found in chromosomes – is likely to suppress activity of virus-like DNA elements known ...
Biotechnology
Sep 1, 2016
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19
An international team of scientists has identified large-scale genetic changes that marked the evolution of pregnancy in mammals.
Biotechnology
Jan 29, 2015
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104
We like to think of evolution as a fine-tuning process, one that whittles away genetic redundancies. The only problem is, we are not fine-tuned machines. Our bodies are chock-full of parts that either don't work anymore or ...
Biotechnology
Nov 17, 2014
24
1
The story of why we are all so different goes well beyond the endless mixing and matching of DNA through breeding. A new study in the journal Nature Communications, for instance, reports a new molecular mechanism of individual ...
Biotechnology
Nov 8, 2013
1
0
(Phys.org)—Transposable elements—or transposons—are DNA sequences that move in the genome from one location to another. Discovered in the 1940s, for years they were thought to be unimportant and were called "junk DNA." ...
Biotechnology
Nov 29, 2012
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0
Small, mobile sequences of DNA left over from viruses, called transposons or "jumping genes" because of their ability to move around the genome, pose a significant threat to the genetic integrity and stability of an organism. ...
Biotechnology
Dec 22, 2011
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