All cellular life as we know it today stems from a single common ancestor, from which all modern lineages emerged. The origin of cellular life is thought to be the node in the Tree of Life from which Archaea and Bacteria, the two primary domains, diverged. The universality of some features across cellular life evidences […]
Author: Lluís Montoliu , researcher, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB – CSIC, Spain) Garfield, star of the eponymous comic strip created by Jim Davis in 1978, is, like many of the cats that roam our homes, orange. He is orange in the same way that some people are redheaded, some horses are brown, or some […]
Scientists believe individuals of the most recently discovered hominin group (the Denisovans) that interbred with modern day humans passed on some of their genes via multiple, distinct interbreeding events that helped shape early human history. In 2010, the first draft of the Neanderthal genome was published, and comparisons with modern human genomes revealed that Neanderthal […]
When you think about DNA, the first thing that probably comes to mind is the double helix model published by Watson and Crick. However, in the 90s scientists identified a particular conformation in DNA molecules in vitro (in a tube): single chain knot-like loops that they called i-motifs. These structures form because, instead of the […]
Many large mammals have lost genetic diversity, often thanks to the actions of people shrinking their populations. The implications can be severe because without genetic diversity, a population does not have a “genetic database” to fall back on to adapt to environmental change. The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) is no stranger to this reduction in […]
Author: Ramón Muñoz-Chápuli has been Professor of Animal Biology in the University of Málaga until his retirement. He has investigated for forty years in the fields of developmental biology and animal evolution. Lungfish (Dipnoi) are fascinating animals. Despite having gills, they can breathe atmospheric air thanks to a pair of lungs. Their geographic distribution aligns […]
Chromatin is a complex of DNA and histone, a protein, in the nucleus of a cell. One of the main functions of chromatin is to help DNA packing. Cellular phenotypic heterogeneity is a key determinant of many biological functions; yet, it is still not clear whether it stems from the modifications of the chromatin structure […]
Many (if not most) clinical trials end up failing, but given the bias towards positive results sometimes the reasons for their not working remain unclear. Luckily, a team at Open Targets and EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have analysed the reasons for aborted clinical trials mentioned in Clinicaltrials.gov, the open-source register for clinical trials worldwide […]
Authors: Eva-Maria Geigl, Directrice de recherche CNRS, co-responsable de l’équipe Épigénome et paléogénome de l’Institut Jacques Monod, Université Paris Cité; Oğuzhan Parasayan, Chercheur post-doctoral, Institut Pasteur, and Thierry Grange, Directeur de Recherche CNRS, co-responsable d’équipe de recherche, Institut Jacques Monod, Université Paris Cité High-resolution analysis of the genomes of individuals buried in a 4,500-year-old collective […]
The evolution of the human being has a complex form in which some branches bifurcate and form two different species and some different branches come together again and form individuals with a certain degree of hybridization. The only hominin remaining today is Homo sapiens and the last to disappear was Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals, our closest […]