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An anatomical illustration from Johannes Sobotta’s Human Anatomy, 1908.

New Study Highlights Role of Gene Expression in Human Brain Evolution

Jan 2, 2025 by News Staff

University of California, Santa Barbara’s Professor Soojin Yi and colleagues aimed to determine how genes in different types of brain cells have evolved...

Guo et al. confirmed the distinct taxonomic position of Hainan tea within Camellia sinensis, providing valuable insights for resource conservation and molecular breeding. Image credit: Lin2015.

Hainan Island’s Tea Plants Are Unique Variety of Camellia sinensis: Study

Jan 2, 2025 by News Staff

Tea (Camellia sinensis), originating in China over 3,000 years ago, has transitioned from a medicinal herb to a widely consumed beverage. Despite considerable...

By analyzing the variation of FAAs among 339 tea accessions in two years, we can know that the determined components of FAAs including arginine, glutamine, glutamate, alanine, and theanine with the highest diversity index differed among different genetic resources and intraspecific accessions. Meanwhile, their amounts in Camellia sinensis were all significantly higher than in the wild relatives. The study confirmed the significant opposite trend between chlorophyll and FAA profiles. Image credit: Sci.News.

New Research Sheds More Light on Genetic Makeup of Tea

Dec 26, 2024 by News Staff

Free amino acids (FAAs) positively determine the tea quality, notably theanine, endowing umami taste of tea infusion. However, their concentrations vary...

El Sidron Neanderthals taste wild mushrooms, pine nuts and forest moss. Image credit: Abel Grau, CSIC Communication.

Scientists Identify Genetic Variants that Determine Tooth Shape

Dec 17, 2024 by News Staff

One of these genetic variants was inherited from Neanderthals, according to a study led by University College London researchers. El Sidron Neanderthals...

Denisovans were probably dark-skinned, unlike the pale Neandertals. The picture shows a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Mauro Cutrona.

Study: Neanderthal Gene Flow into Modern Humans Occurred between 50,500 and 43,500 Years Ago

Dec 13, 2024 by News Staff

In a genomic study encompassing more than 300 genomes, researchers determined the time period during which Neanderthals interbred with modern humans, starting...

Illustration of the Zlatý kůň/Ranis group. Image credit: Tom Björklund / Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Earliest Modern Human Genomes Decoded

Dec 12, 2024 by News Staff

Scientists have sequenced and analyzed the genomes of seven individuals who lived between 42,000 and 49,000 years ago in Ranis, Germany and Zlatý kůň,...

Transgenic hybrid poplar with increased expression levels of BSTR enhanced photosynthesis efficiency and biomass under greenhouse conditions. Image credit: Feyissa et al., doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2024.11.002.

Newly-Discovered Gene Enhances Photosynthetic Efficiency and Plant Productivity

Dec 4, 2024 by News Staff

Biologists have identified a new gene in California poplar trees (Populus trichocarpa) — named BOOSTER — that enhances photosynthesis and can...

Prehistoric Central European women’s manual labor was tougher than rowing in today’s boat crews.

Study: Central Europe’s First Farmers Lived in Equality 8,000 Years Ago

Nov 29, 2024 by News Staff

The Linear Pottery Culture (Linearbandkeramik, LBK) communities, which were the first to spread farming across large parts of Europe, showed no signs of...

Kuitems et al. provide evidence that the Norse were active on the North American continent in the year 1021 CE. Image credit: Oscar C.R.

Viking Expansion into North Atlantic Was More Complex than Previously Thought

Nov 25, 2024 by News Staff

The Vikings played a preeminent role in the peopling of the North Atlantic, and one might expect populations that were founded by them to be genetically...

Several Denisovan Populations Introgressed into Modern Humans Multiple Times: Study

Nov 8, 2024 by News Staff

The identification of a new hominin group called Denisovans was one of the most exciting discoveries in human evolution in the last decade. Unlike Neanderthal...

Arabidopsis thaliana. Image credit: Carl Davies, CSIRO / CC BY 3.0.

Scientists Investigate Inner Workings of DNA Methylation in Plants

Nov 6, 2024 by News Staff

DNA methylation is one of several epigenetic mechanisms crucial for regulating gene expression in eukaryotic organisms. Arabidopsis thaliana. Image credit:...

The versatility of somatosensation arises from heterogeneous dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. However, soma transcriptomes of individual human (h)DRG neurons -- critical information to decipher their functions -- are lacking due to technical difficulties. In their new study, Yu et al. isolated somata from individual hDRG neurons and conducted deep RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to detect, on average, over 9,000 unique genes per neuron, and they identified 16 neuronal types.

Neuroscientists Identify 16 Neuronal Types Involved in Human Sense of Touch

Nov 6, 2024 by News Staff

New research led by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, Karolinska Institute and Linköping University provides a landscape view of the human...

Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus). Image credit: William Curtis / The Botanical Magazine.

Scientists Publish Chromosome-Scale Reference Genome of Grass Pea

Nov 1, 2024 by News Staff

A research team led by John Innes Centre scientists has sequenced and annotated the chromosome-scale genome assembly of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus), a...

The spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus). Image credit: CSIRO.

Spotted Handfish Genome Sequenced

Oct 8, 2024 by News Staff

A team of researchers at CSIRO has decoded the genome of the spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus), a critically endangered species of marine fish...

These 3,500-year-old kefir cheese samples are among the few dairy remains preserved more than 3,000 years and were produced by the Bronze Age Xiaohe population -- a population that possesses mixed lifestyles and techniques (e.g., farming, dairy production, hunting, etc.). Also, although early Xiaohe individuals show little genetic interaction with other populations, mitochondrial DNA data suggest maternal connections with East and West Eurasians. By recovering DNA information from ancient fermented dairy remains, Liu et al. investigated the lifestyle linked to the usage of fermented dairy by the Xiaohe population and explore the co-evolution between the fermented bacteria and their hosts. Image credit: Liu et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.008.

World’s Oldest Cheese Sheds Light on Origins of Kefir

Sep 25, 2024 by News Staff

Despite the long history of consumption of fermented dairy, little is known about how the fermented microbes were utilized and evolved over human history....

The 5D memory crystal. Image credit: University of Southampton.

Researchers Store Entire Human Genome on ‘Everlasting’ 5D Memory Crystal

Sep 20, 2024 by News Staff

Unlike other data storage formats that degrade over time, 5D memory crystals can store up to 360 terabytes of information without loss for billions of...

Rapanui people. Image credit: © Santiago Caruso.

Genomes of Ancient Easter Islanders Reveal Resilience and Pre-European Contacts with Americas

Sep 11, 2024 by News Staff

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the world. It has captured the imagination of many owing to its...

Neanderthal Populations Were Genetically and Socially Isolated for Tens of Thousands of Years: Study

Sep 11, 2024 by News Staff

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the fossilized remains of a Neanderthal individual at Grotte Mandrin, a rockshelter located in Mediterranean France...

Peña Martinez et al. observed a total of 53,000 i-motifs among three human cells lines: MCF7, U2OS, HEK293T. Image credit: Peña Martinez et al., doi: 10.1038/s44318-024-00210-5.

Mysterious I-Motif Structures are Common in Human Genomic DNA, Study Finds

Sep 3, 2024 by News Staff

The so-called i-motifs are knot-like DNA structures formed in the nuclei of human cells and believed to provide critical genomic regulation. In new research,...