Foxes Started Eating Human Food Remains as Early as 42,000 Years Ago A team of scientists from the University of Tübingen has studied the diet of Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) that lived during the Paleolithic period in southwestern Germany. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Image …
Read More »Telomere To Telomere
Researchers Produce First ‘Telomere-To-Telomere’ Sequence of Human Chromosome A team of U.S. and U.K. scientists has generated the end-to-end gapless DNA sequence of the human X chromosome. A telomere is the end of a chromosome that protects the interior of a chromosome from damage during cell division. Image credit: Darryl …
Read More »Unprecedented Detail
Researchers Capture Human Dental Enamel in Unprecedented Detail A research team led by Northwestern University scientists has uncovered the structural makeup of human dental enamel at unprecedented atomic resolution, revealing lattice patterns and unexpected irregularities. Enamel is made up of tightly bunched, oblong crystals that are about 1,000 times smaller …
Read More »Genetic Variations
Researchers Identify 126,018 Human Genetic Variations A team of scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Francis Crick Institute, and EMBL-EBI has created a comprehensive structural variation atlas for a geographically diverse set of human genomes and recovered sequences missing from the human reference sequence. Among the 126,018 structural variations discovered …
Read More »Scientists Create Hair
Bearing Human Skin from Pluripotent Stem Cells A team of researchers from several U.S. institutions has created an organoid culture system that generates complex skin from human pluripotent stem cells. A hair-bearing skin organoid. Image credit: Indiana University School of Medicine. “This is the first study to show that human …
Read More »Pigeons May Share Human Ability to Build on Work of Others
A team of researchers at the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology has shown that the elements of the capacity of humans to build on the work of others may also be present in homing pigeons (Columba livia). Single flying pigeon. Image credit: Takao Sasaki. The ability to gather, pass …
Read More »Researchers Find New Genetic Variants that Influence Human Adult Height
Eighty-three height-associated genetic variants have been discovered in a large-scale study led by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, Montreal Heart Institute, the Broad Institute and the University of Exeter. The research appears today in the journal Nature. Eirini Marouli et al report 83 height-associated coding variants with lower …
Read More »Recently-Discovered Antiviral Protein Inhibits HIV-1 in Non-Human Primates
A team of scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered that a gene called SLFN11 — which encodes a protein known as Schlafen family member 11, or Schlafen11 — may induce a cellular response against infection by viruses including human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1). The research is published …
Read More »Scientists Use Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Regenerate Epicardium
A process using human stem cells can generate heart cells belonging to the external layer, the epicardium, according to an international team of scientists from the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands and AstraZeneca in Sweden. A model highlighting the specification …
Read More »Study: Endogenous Retroviruses in Genome Important for Human Brain
About 8% of the human genome is composed of endogenous retroviruses. According to a new study published in the journal Cell Reports, these retroviruses may have played a significant role in the development of the human brain as well as in various neurological diseases, such as ALS, schizophrenia and bipolar …
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