The most popular model used by geneticists for the last 35 years to detect the footprints of human evolution may overlook more common subtle changes, a new international study finds.
Scientists discover a genetic variant that allows a fish in the Hudson River to live in waters heavily polluted by PCBs.
Rising carbon dioxide levels associated with global warming may affect interactions between plants and the insects that eat them, altering the course of plant evolution, research at the University of Michigan suggests.
Anthropologists from GW and NYU question claims that several prominent fossil discoveries made in the last decade are our human ancestors. With a more nuanced explanation of the fossils' place on the Tree of Life, the authors conclude that instead of being our ancestors, the fossils are more likely belong to extinct distant cousins.
In a paper recently published in Current Anthropology, SBU Professor John Shea disproves the myth that the earliest humans were significantly different from us.
Evolution is not a steady march towards ever more sophisticated beings and therefore the search for the living "missing links" is pointless, according to findings published by a team of researchers led by Dr. Hervé Philippe of the Université de Montréal's Department of Biochemistry.
Leafcutter ants, signature denizens of New World tropical forests, are unique in their ability to harvest fresh leaves to cultivate a nutrient-rich fungus as food.
A new study by a Stony Brook University professor shows that structures that have been evolutionarily lost for hundreds of millions of years can be regained.
The discovery that a large cluster of genes appears to have jumped directly from one species of fungus to another significantly strengthens the argument that a different metaphor, such as a mosaic, may be more appropriate to describe the process of evolution than the traditional tree of life.
In analyzing the molecular sensor for the plant growth hormone brassinolide, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that although plants took an evolutionary path different from their animal cousins, they arrived at similar solutions to a common problem: How to reliably receive and process incoming signals.
In a new study, scientists at the University of Maryland and the Institut Pasteur show that bacteria evolve new abilities, such as antibiotic resistance, predominantly by acquiring genes from other bacteria. The researchers new insights into the evolution of bacteria partly contradict the widely accepted theory that new biological functions in bacteria and other microbes arise primarily through the process of gene duplication within the same organism.
New research shows how humans, unlike any other species on Earth, readily learn to throw long distances. This research also suggests that this unique evolutionary trait is entangled with language development in a way critical to our very existence.
In a first-of-its-kind experiment, a University of Vermont scientist created robots that, like tadpoles becoming frogs, change their body forms while learning how to walk. These evolving robots learned to walk more rapidly than robots with fixed bodies and developed a more robust gait.
A team of paleontologists and geologists from Argentina and the United States on Jan. 13 announced the discovery of a lanky dinosaur that roamed South America in search of prey as the age of dinosaurs began, about 230 million years ago. Sporting a long neck and tail and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds, the dinosaur has been named Eodromaeus, the “dawn runner.”
A SCUBA expedition in Australia and New Zealand to find the rare embryos of an unusual shark cousin enabled American and British researchers to confirm new developmental similarities between fish and mammals. The study confirms that organisms separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution share similar genetic programs for body formation.
Whitehead Institute researchers have determined that heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) can create diverse heritable traits in brewer’s yeast by affecting a large portion of the yeast genome. The researchers conclude that Hsp90 was key in shaping the evolutionary history of the yeast genome, and likely others as well.
University of Adelaide researchers are a step closer to unraveling the mysteries of human sexual development, following genetic studies that show male mice can be created without a Y chromosome – through the activation of an ancient brain gene.
Those crafty creationists just won't let up. Since they can't get their way in the courts or state legislatures, their new tactic is to attack the curriculum itself, from science standards to textbooks, forcing teachers to teach science the creationist way.
New genes that have evolved in species as little as one million years ago – a virtual blink in evolutionary history – can be just as essential for life as ancient genes, startling new research has discovered. The University of Chicago study challenges evolutionary biology assumptions about the importance of new genes in development.
A mathematically driven evolutionary snapshot of woody plants in four similar climates shows that genetic diversity is more sensitive to extinctions and loss of habitat them than long thought.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right