Genome

Scientists don't know much about what the very first mammal looked like, but they do know that it lived around 180-250 million years ago and that every mammal on Earth – from blue whales to platypuses – is descended from it.But thanks to new research, we now know what its genome looked like.An international team of scientists has computationally pieced together a likely genome for the common ancestor of mammals by working backward from 32 genomes of living species.The analysis included a wide range of species from all…

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo, for his work in tracing human evolution by reconstructing the genomes of extinct hominins. Pääbo was the first to sequence the Neanderthal genome and discovered a brand new human relative.While Neanderthals have been known as an extinct human relative for well over a century, exactly how they were related to modern humans has been harder to study. DNA degrades over time, leaving only trace amounts after thousands of years…

Paabo’s research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline called paleogenomics, and has “generated new understanding of our evolutionary history", it said. “By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human", the Nobel committee said in a statement. The founder and director of the department of genetics at the Max Planck…

Comparing those genomes to those of people without schizophrenia has allowed investigators to uncover multiple genes that have a profound impact on a person's risk of developing it. By being able to sequence more genomes faster and more cheaply, Gabriel says they’ll be able to find additional genes that have a more subtle effect on the condition. “Once you have bigger data, the signal becomes clearer,” she says.“This is the kind of thing that shakes up everything you’re working on,” agrees Jeremy Schmutz, a faculty…

Some 180 million years ago, there lived an early mammal – built a lot like the guilty looking fella above – that became the earliest-known ancestor to all mammals on Earth, from the blue whale, to the camel, the rhino, the koala, and your good self. Frankly, I'd be looking a little guilty myself if I was that guy, he's single-handedly responsible for the multiple unskippable ads in front of YouTube videos, among other grim tragedies. Mammals diverged from the rest of the vertebrate kingdom in the Carboniferous period,…

Ferns are weird. They're green and leafy like other forest plants, but they reproduce more like mushrooms do—by releasing clouds of spores. Many species don't require a partner for fertilization, unlike most of their seed-bearing cousins. Recent studies estimate ferns split from seed-bearing plants about 400 million years ago. And fern genomes are bafflingly large. Despite ferns' unique physiology and their relationship to seed plants, however, these strange genomes have been largely neglected by researchers. Until…

A deep dive into the toilets of the past has given us new insight into the relationship between humans and the worms that love us.By extracting DNA from a range of sources, including "archaeologically-defined latrines" used by the Vikings up to 2,500 years ago, researchers have reconstructed the genome of one of the oldest known human parasites.The findings reveal that the whipworm (Trichuris trichiura) has been living with, and adapting to, humans for at least 55,000 years.The new information on the biology and behavior…

Some of the lookalike pairs who were studied in the current research.Photo: Joshi, et al/Cell ReportsIt turns out that unrelated doppelgangers may have quite a bit in common beyond just twin faces. New research suggests that lookalikes with incredibly similar faces tend to share many genetic variants—variants that don’t seem to just shape their appearance but general aspects of their life. At the same time, other important influences, such as the microbiome, appear to contribute little to their symmetry.Study author Manel…

For the first time, researchers have sequenced all 3,117,275,501 bases of our genetic code Credit: Martin KrzywinskiAdvertisement The human genome is at last complete. Researchers have been working for decades toward this goal, and the Human Genome Project claimed victory in 2001, when it had read almost all of a person's DNA. But the stubborn remaining 8 percent of the genome took another two decades to decipher. These final sections were highly repetitive and highly variable among individuals, making them the…

While science continues to identify and unravel the role of the thousands of proteins in the human body, many of them are too small to be picked up with current techniques. These ghost microproteins live in what scientists refer to as the "dark matter" of our genome and may play important roles in the progression of disease. A team at Yale University has now claimed a breakthrough with a technology they liken to "spray paint" for cells, which they've now demonstrated by mapping previously unknown proteins for the first…