Genetics News

Today, there are more than 8 billion human beings on the planet. Our species dominate Earth’s landscapes, and our activities are driving large numbers...

Banana is one of the most important crops of the world. Cavendish-type bananas, which have a monospecific Musa acuminata origin, account for around half...

Near the river Tigris, outside the ancient city of Kalhu, known today as Nimrud, northern Iraq, a brickmaker once prepared a clay brick for the construction...

The only known specimen of the small spotted cat species Leopardus narinensis was found on the Galeras Volcano in southern Colombia in 1989. The tigrina...

Einkorn (Triticum monococcum) was the first domesticated wheat species, and was central to the birth of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution in the...

A team of U.S. scientists has sequenced and assembled the genome of the Gossypium herbaceum cultivar Wagad, representing the first domesticated accession...

Understanding how complex eukaryotic cells emerged from prokaryotic ancestors represents a major challenge in biology. A main point of contention in refining...

The rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis) is an important pollinator in North America and a federally listed endangered species. Putting together its...

Humans whose genetic ancestors lived outside Africa have a small proportion of the genome that traces back to interbreeding events with Neanderthals. To...

Also known as Dupuytren’s disease, ‘Viking disease’ hand disorder — a condition in which one or more fingers become permanently bent in a flexed...

The appearance of human eyebrows is not just a matter of grooming but is in the genes. Eyebrow thickness, as any other appearance trait, is highly heritable....

The dispersal of anatomically modern Homo sapiens out of Africa and across Eurasia provides a unique opportunity to examine the impacts of genetic selection...

Scientists have constructed and annotated the first reference genome for the sour cherry cultivar Montmorency, a 400-year-old French amarelle selection...

Scientists from the Florida Museum of Natural History and elsewhere have sequenced 391 genes from nearly 2,300 butterfly species, sampled from 90 countries...

Scientists with the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium have released a new high-quality collection of reference human genome sequences that includes...

ATF3, a gene that leads to a taller nose (from top to bottom), may have been the product of natural selection as ancient humans adapted to colder climates...

Application of a novel non-destructive DNA extraction method to a Paleolithic deer tooth pendant from Denisova Cave, Siberia, resulted in the recovery...

Over the past 100 million years, mammals have adapted to nearly every environment on Earth. Scientists with the Zoonomia Project have been cataloging the...

The sled dog Balto has been celebrated in books and movies for his role in delivering desperately needed diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925....