Researchers at Penn State have discovered a mutation in the gene for the aryl hydrocarbon receptor which would desensitise an individual’s reaction to the aromatic hydrocarbons in smoke from cooking fires, and in meat roasted upon them, and through exposure to burning...
Many thanks to Cynthia Beall for flagging up this interesting Scientific American piece about the discovery of an osteosarcoma in the toe bone of an as yet unidentified hominin discovered in the Swartkrans Cave and dated to around 1.7 million years ago. The source...
Katherine Pollard, now at the Gladstone Institute, has done most, over the last decade, to research and identify small non-coding regions of the humane genome that have evolved very rapidly since the split from the last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Hence they are...
I must admit to an internal debate on whether or not to post this piece on Meg Ryan Syndrome – otherwise known as female orgasm – until I saw that the second author on the paper in the Journal of Experimental Zoology was Gunter Wagner – a professor...
Over thirty years ago, a veterinary scientist from the University of California at Davis – Benjamin Hart – first drew the links between pathogenic infections, the immune response, and behaviour, when he formulated his theory of sickness behaviour. At the...
