Genetics
Category archives for Genetics
Genetics and Food Security
Posted by Greg Laden on January 30, 2016 
There is a food crisis sneaking up on us right now. A lot of them, actually. A lot of little one, some big ones. There are always places in the world where food has become scarce for at time, and people starve or move. You’ve heard of the “”Syrian refugee crisis,” and the often extreme…
Temperature and sex determination
Posted by Greg Laden on December 2, 2014 
Some interesting new research. The paper is, unfortunately, behind a paywall but they made a video, so it is worth posting. Here’s the press release for the paper: Scientists know that temperature determines sex in certain reptiles—alligators, lizards, turtles, and possibly dinosaurs. In many turtles, warm temperatures during incubation create females. Cold temperatures, males. But…
It turns out that coffee is special
Posted by Greg Laden on September 5, 2014 
But you knew that already. The Coffea canephora Genome has been sequenced. This is probably more important than the Human Genome project because humans are completely useless first thing in the morning, but coffee is very important first thing in the morning. Some important plant evolution involves wholesale duplication of large parts of the genome.…
Is Human Behavior Genetic Or Learned?
Posted by Greg Laden on March 7, 2014 
Imagine that there is a trait observed among people that seems to occur more frequently in some families and not others. One might suspect that the trait is inherited genetically. Imagine researchers looking for the genetic underpinning of this trait and at first, not finding it. What might you conclude? It could be reasonable to…
How to do any genetic research you want without getting permission.
Posted by Greg Laden on August 21, 2013 
Let’s say you want to do a market-related study in which you gain entry to one thousand homes representing sets of people defined by the usual variables of income, ethnicity, urban-suburban lifestyle etc. The first thing you do is to ask a few people, real nice like, if you can go through their stuff and…
Regenesis: Taking over biology using readily available materials from your kitchen
Posted by Greg Laden on December 3, 2012 
I might be exaggerating slightly about the ready availability of the materials… Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by George Church and Ed Regis looks like a futurist tome on what could happen when technology finally catches up with human imagination and everything changes. Except it isn’t. Most futurists are people with…
Demonstration of the Double Helix
Posted by Greg Laden on April 24, 2012 This is a proof of concept blog post. Please give it a try and let me know if it works for you! Double Helix from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project by Sándor Kabai
The Genetics of Pesticide Resistant Bedbugs
Posted by Greg Laden on January 19, 2011 Bedbugs (Insects of the Cimicidae family, commonly Cimex lectularius) are annoying, might carry diseases (though this is unclear, so probably nothing importat1, and are apparently becoming more common in the US. Interestingly, there has been very little study done of their genetics. A new study just out in PLoS ONE looks at the bedbug genome…
What is the most important human adaptation?
Posted by Greg Laden on October 22, 2010 Human infants require more care than they should, if we form our expectations based on closely related species (apes, and more generally, Old World simian primates). It has been said that humans are born three months early. This is not accurate. It was thought that our body size predicted a 12 month gestation, and some…
Why didn’t Darwin discover Mendel’s laws?
Posted by Greg Laden on November 24, 2009 Perhaps we are all subject to falling into the trap of what I call the Hydraulic Theory of Everything. If you eat more you will be bigger, if you eat less you will be smaller. Emotional states are the continuously varying outcome of different levels of a set of hormones, forming “happy” or “stressy” or…