Lactase persistence--the gene that allows about a third of adults to drink milk without major digestive pains--tends to break down geographically as you can see in this infographic from Nature's history of milk tolerance.
Researchers estimate that the allele for lactase persistence might have popped up as recently as 7500 years ago starting in Hungary.
but perhaps it's related to our inate will to protect/promote our own genes at the expense of strangers we don't need.
Inactivation of taste genes causes male sterilityhttp://www. mybiologica. com/4640/science-en/inactivation-of-taste-genes-causes-male-sterility. html...Scientists
By looking at the comparison between domestic and wild strains they can tell which specific genes are active
and trace the way individual genes interact to affect the whole fruit. One species for example is found in the desert
and has accelerated genes to tolerate extreme heat and lack of water. Theoretically the comparison could allow genetic biologists to pick out exactly which genes they want to splice to have desired the effect on the tomato.
This is a huge step forward; crossbreeding of wild and domestic tomatoes is common but kind of a crapshoot since previously the relationship between genes wasn't as well understood.
This may help with future efforts to breed new traits into tomato or other crops said Julin Maloof of the University of California Davis who was one of the lead researchers on the paper.
The pathogen shares the same genus as the organism that caused The irish potato famine. Other Phytophthora species are able to infect almost all of the fruit and nut trees people plant around the world.
This was caused the sort by something in my genes. The doctors said that I had probably been born with a bad pancreas at the start.
I suspect my ridiculously good health is more good gene's and a good mental attitude than anything the scientific community can quantify.
#European Bee Sperm bank Will Improve U s. Bee Gene Poolhere's a new idea for protecting the declining honeybee population in the U s. One team of scientists is importing European honeybee semen for fun
An injection of European sperm will diversify the American bee gene pool however which may lead to healthier American insects.
For decades the bans protected U s. bees from the 1922 parasite but they made the U s. bee gene pool small.
What they found was that a critical gene called Bmp4 switches on causing developing genitals to wither away.
In other birds like ducks and emus that gene stays switched off allowing their penises to grow fully.
Behaviorally worthy males stop passing on their genes and the young suffer the species dies out.
It's like where in the world are the genes we're looking for? Shannon Pinson a USDA geneticist tells Popular Science.
Once scientists find the genes that are responsible for mineral levels the next step in their research they'll hand that information over to plant breeders.
Breeders create new varieties of rice the old-fashioned way by reproducing only the plants with the genes they want.
Even identifying and targeting specific genes is a well-known technique that researchers have honed since the 1980s.
however because it involves many genes. It also involves many interacting minerals. You don't want to increase the calcium in rice for example only to decrease magnesium at the same time.
So cooked rice texture which is controlled by one gene came first. Then resistance to a fungus called blast.
The Magicicada the genus of cicada that's about to blanket the northeast United states is a very odd creature.
there is a gene that differentiates the 17-year cicadas from the 13-year cicadas but says Gilbert we don't really have any way to see what the hell they're doing down there for 17 years.
Human eggs and Human cells worked just as poorly as human cell and rabbit eggs right down to specific genes.
We can even screen the entire genome in great gulps of DNA at a time looking for the signature of rapid selection in our genes.
and the ferocious lion by culling the most dangerous maneaters from their gene pool for thousands upon thousands of years.
and their genes must die with them. That being said humans can adapt to higher altitudes just like humans can adapt to not get seasick easily
Researchers are making headway in mapping the genes that help bees overcome these obstacles including
which genes help them safely break down pesticides. Now researchers have identified several compounds that help turn on those genes.
They're present in honey something commercial bees don't get to keep--their food supply is taken for human use
Wenfu Mao and colleagues found three compounds in honey that increase the expression of a gene that helps bees metabolize pesticides.
In fact it's the only member of its genus so it's not that closely related to any other species
In our world evolutionary developmental biology had to challenge the simpleminded gene-centered Darwinism of the 1960s to generate a more sophisticated paradigm.
Humans also carry epigenetic tags that may affect their behavior Scientists found methyl groups attached to a stress-hormone-receptor gene in child-abuse victims who committed suicide.
Drone Male honeybees which carry only one set of chromosomes fertilize the queen's eggs.
Genes: Epigenetic tags such as methyl groups determine how much of a gene is expressed or whether the gene is expressed at all.
Proteins: The tags also dictate how pieces of genes are assembled into an mrna transcript which eventually determines the type of protein made from that gene.
A protein produced in a nurse bee will look different and serve a different function than one produced in a forager.
Queens per Hive: 1workers per Queen: 10000ã¢Â#Â0000average Lifespan of a Worker bee in Months:
3managed Honeybee Colonies in 2011 in the U s.:2. 49 Millionsee the rest of the articles from our 2013 How It Works section here
It's called survival of the fittest who then pass on their genes to surviving generations. If those birds are quicker--maybe by shorter wings
and pass their mutated genes to their offspring adding new traits into the gene pool.
and humans they mapped the DNA sequences on an evolutionary family tree for primates going back 60 million years estimating what genes could have looked like for extinct primate ancestors.
We learned the genes in the body and now have a good understanding of how they cause disease
and gene silencing/overexpression to treat these. Stop being paranoid scientists are not elitists...We are little kids who still have the passion to ask why not.
While thereã¢Â#Â#s little doubt that a personã¢Â#Â#s experiences and learned behaviors have a huge impact on their disposition it is also now widely accepted that genes
When we translate material things from genes to jet planes into numbers we can analyze and manipulate them far more easily.
Did you know the domesticated watermelon has about as many genes as you do? In 2012 genome researchers sequenced the DNA of an unborn human baby the western lowland gorilla fruits and grains and livestock.
so that they have genes from a soil bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis. The genes produce crystalline chemicals that kill insect larvae when they eat it.
A larva that chows down on a Bt-crystal-producing GM plant soon stops eating.
The sequences of parent plants'genes represent some of the companies'most important intellectual property.
To make Arctic apples biologists took genes from Granny smith and Golden delicious varieties modified them to suppress the enzyme that causes browning
Biologists also introduce genes to make plants pest-and herbicide-resistant; those traits dominate the more than 430 million acres of GMO crops that have already been planted globally.
Humans have been manipulating the genes of crops for millennia by selectively breeding plants with desirable traits.
They do this by either using bacteria to deliver the new genetic material or by shooting tiny DNA-coated metal pellets into plant cells with a gene gun.
or a toxin or if it is going to turn another gene off says Peggy G. Lemaux a plant biologist at the University of California Berkeley.
Genes that help wild plants survive might spread whereas those that say boost Vitamin a content might remain at low levels
Traditionally cheesemakers use rennet from the lining of cow stomachs to get their chymosin ut an estimated 80 to 90 percent of hard cheeses in the U s. are made with bacteria modified with the rennet-producing cow gene.
Today's most common GMO technology RECOMBINANT DNA inserts genes into a plant's cells via bacteria or specialized delivery tools but it involves some trial and error.
A new method called gene editing uses enzymes to snip out a specific bit of DNA to either delete it
Gene editing may also provide fodder for fresh controversy. Current GMO methods leave a trace behind
or example a bit of the DNA from bacterium used to insert new genes. The enzymes used in gene editing don't leave such a fingerprint so future genetically modified plants will be harder to detect with tests.
This article originally appeared in the July 2014 issue of Popular Science. Note (7/17/2014 6:
mapping the birds gene sequences in order to determine the best approach for getting those good heat-resistant genes into American chickens without taking along all the genetic baggage as Schmidt calls it that s unnecessary to duplicate in the hybrid chickens.
Once Schmidt and his colleagues have deciphered and analyzed the genetic codes of these hardy African
whose genes are similar to those found in closely related unmodified animals. So instead of giving pigs mouse genes scientists could make domestic pigs with genes normally found in wild pigs.
The end result would be engineered pigs that farmers could have made through generations of careful breeding geneticists argue.
I don't think those who don't wish to eat GM foods will find GM pigs-with-pig-genes any better than pigs with mouse genes.
The decoy-building spider is thought to be a species in the genus Cyclosa and Reeves and colleagues plan to formally describe the species
The filmmakers of Jupiter Ascending augmented human characters with animal genes to make them more physically imposing.
At other points it s a naturally occurring hiccup like the X-Gene that allowed superhumans to manipulate brain waves or magnetic fields.
Genes can mutate spontaneously or be manipulated in the lab to create new traits. Take for example the ability of most adult humans to process lactose in dairy products.
and using genes from its host trees hich would explain why it mimics the nearest leaf
and Blood Institute team specially engineered its pigs to have some human genes and to lack some pig genes.
The researchers also gave their baboons drugs to suppress their immune systems. Human patients take immunosuppressant drugs
Second they inserted genes that code for the enzymes into the DNA of E coli (chosen
if space affects which genes the staple expresses RIA Novosti reports. Updated February 3: Added comments from Bruce Bugbee c
The technique called RNA interference or RNAI works by creating snippets of RNA that correspond to genes in the target species say corn rootworm.
When these chunks of genetic material enter the rootworm perhaps after being sprayed onto the crop the animal reacts to this RNA snippet as it would an invading virus. This prompts a response that attacks and silences the corresponding gene in the host's own DNA.
If this gene is necessary for the organism's survival the theory goes it dies.
but it also helps reveal a few interesting secrets hiding within the pepper's genes. Because peppers are not so different from their cousins the potato
and we even know the gene that could turn it on and off Van Deynze tells Popular Science.
That gene is called capsaicin synthase. With the genome the team of researchers learned more about capsaicin synthase
CS biosynthesizes the capsaisin and the Capsicum genus is the only one that evolved to biosynthesize capsaicinoids.
The study suggests that the pungency from peppers was evolved through new genes by unequal duplication of existing genes.
He found that there is little risk of genetically modified genes cross-pollinating with plants of other species
They likely arise from extensive herbicide use with Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops not directly from the Roundup Ready genes themselves.
The same genes that make cows produce more milk also kill off cow embryos they found.
The European researchers found that up to a third of Nordic Red Cattle are missing one copy of each of the same four genes.
Like humans cows are supposed to have two copies of all of their genes one from their moms and one from their dads.
Having no copies of those four genes is deadly but at the same time having one copy of each makes a cow produce more milk than normal cows that have two copies.
Those missing genes are a gift with a dangerous catch. Of course before this study farmers didn't know how all of this worked.
thus passing on their shortened genes. That's why the genetic flaw is so common in Nordic cows.
whether the bulls they use in breeding are missing copies of these four genes Goutam Sahana a Danish geneticist who worked on the study said in a statement.
which may be missing those genes too. By preventing animals that are both missing genes from mating with each other a quantum jump in fertility could be achieved in Nordic Red breeds Sahana said.
What about cattle in the U s.?This study looked only at Nordic herds so it can't say
Dzierson posited that males were haploid--possessing one set of chromosomes which was confirmed in the 1900s with the advent of the microscope.
The authors studied 14 natural sequence variants of the complementary sex determining switch (csd gene) for 76 genotypes of honey bees.
because they have one gene locus responsible for sex determination. Also Page and former graduate student Greg Hunt identified genetic markers--well-characterized regions of DNA--close to the complementary sex determining locus to allow gene mapping.
In addition Hunt and Page found that the honey bees'high recombination rate--the process by which genetic material is mixed physically during sexual reproduction--is the highest of any known animal studied
and Beye were also able to knock out an allele and show how one could get a male from a diploid genotype;
However the questions of which alleles were key how they worked together and in what combinations and why this system evolved were unanswered left
This compelled the current team of collaborators to step back to review what actually constitutes an allele.
There has to be some segment of that gene that is responsible in this allelic series where
if you have two different coding sequences in that part of the gene you end up producing a female said Page.
So we asked how different do two alleles have to be? Can you be off one
and look at these 18-20 alleles and find out what regions of these genes are responsible among these variants.
In this process we also had to determine if there are intermediate kinds of alleles and discover how they might have evolved said Page.
What the authors found was that at least five amino acid differences can control allelic differences to create femaleness through the complementary sex determiner (csd) gene--the control switch.
We discovered that different amounts of arginine serine and proline affect protein binding sites on the csd gene which in turn lead to different conformational states
which then lead to functional changes in the bees--the switch that determines the shift from female to not female said Page.
Teasing out the hidden subtleties of a type of hybrid vigor involving just one gene has provided the scientists with means to tweak the length of time that bushy tomato varieties can produce flowers.
In his previous work CSHL Associate professor Zach Lippman and Israeli colleagues identified a rare example of hybrid vigor involving a genetic defect in the gene that makes florigen a hormone that controls the process of flowering
They found that bushy plants with a mutation in one of the two copies of the florigen gene producing half as much florigen as plants without the mutation do postpone the moment
In addition Academy scientists discovered a new genus of beetle and a previously unidentified genus of sea fan.
On November 19 2013 Igor Sokolov a Schlinger Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences published a paper on Zookeys describing eight new species and a new genus of beetle.
A case of mistaken identity points to need for increased protectionsthis year Academy scientists identified three new species of soft corals and two new species and a new genus
After comparing a colony collected off the coast of San francisco to older samples in the Academy's collection Williams announced an entirely new genus
According to the paper published this year in the International Journal of Ichthyology sharks of this genus are nocturnally active bottom-living animals
This reveals which genes--both parasite and host--are most active during infection. Most strikingly some South american and some atypical North american strains induced a type of immune reaction usually only seen during viral infection known as the type 1 interferon response.
Some duplicated genes were lost over time but others took on new functions including contributions to the development of floral organs.
As another example of the value of the Amborella genome Joshua Der at Penn State noted We estimate that at least 14000 protein-coding genes existed in the last common ancestor of all flowering plants.
Many of these genes are unique to flowering plants and many are known to be important for producing the flower as well as other structures and other processes specific to flowering plants.
Jim Leebens-Mack from UGA noted that The Amborella genome sequence facilitated reconstruction of the ancestral gene order in the'core eudicots'a huge group that comprises about 75 percent of all angiosperms.
As an evolutionary outsider to this diverse group the Amborella genome allowed the researchers to estimate the linear order of genes in an ancestral eudicot genome
and function of protein-coding genes so the cessation of mobile DNA activity may have slowed the rate of evolution of both genome structure and gene function.
In other words it was thought that female birds may have evolved similar patterning to males due to common genes but that female patterns would be lost subsequently as it is not beneficial.
and analyse for the first time the sweet genes of beetroot. The results of the study that will be published today in Nature shed also light on how the genome has been shaped by artificial selection.
Information held in the genome sequence will be useful for further characterization of genes involved in sugar production and identification of targets for breeding efforts.
or quinoa as well as plants with an interesting biology for instance carnivorous plants or desert plants. 27421 protein-coding genes were discovered within the genome of the beet more than are encoded within the human genome.
Sugar beet has a lower number of genes encoding transcription factors than any flowering plant with already known genome adds Bernd Weisshaar a principle investigator from Bielefeld University who was involved in the study.
The researchers speculate that beets may harbor so far unknown genes involved in transcriptional control
and gene interaction networks may have evolved differently in sugar beet compared to other species. The researchers also studied disease resistance genes (the equivalent to the immune system in animals)
These genes turned out as particularly plastic with beet-specific gene family expansions and gene losses.
Additionally gene numbers varied between different sugar beet cultivars which contained up to 271 genes not shared with any of the other lines as Juliane Dohm
and Andr Minoche two scientists involved in the study commented. The researchers also performed an evolutionary analysis of each sugar beet gene in order to put them into context with already known genes of other plants.
This analysis allowed them to identify gene families that are expanded in sugar beet compared to other plants
but also families that are absent. Notably such gene families were associated most commonly with stress response
or with disease resistance added Toni Gabaldon group leader in the CRG Bioinformatics and Genomics programme and ICREA research professor.
and artificial selection gene regulation and gene-environment interaction as well as biotechnological approaches to customize the crop to different uses in the production of sugar
and are able to retain expression of the inserted genes for at least 14 years a report in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research just announced.
A large-scale study of 402 trees from nine insertion events tracked the result of placing the cry3aa gene into hybrid poplar trees.
and reproduce in order to prevent any gene flow into wild tree populations researchers said. With this genetic modification the trees were able to produce an insecticidal protein that helped protect against insect attack.
Annual crops such as cotton and corn already are grown routinely as GMO products with insect resistance genes.
and why extended tests were necessary to demonstrate that the resistance genes would still be expressed more than a decade after planting.
Agencies are likely to require extensive studies of gene flow and their effects on forest ecosystems
Strauss said he advocates an approach of engineering sterility genes into the trees as a mechanism to control gene flow
. In addition the mapping should help guide them to improvements in control methods and toward more usable genes and treatments.
which fall into an order to encode genes specific to an organism. Gabriel likened it to examining beads on a necklace:
and the color sequence determines each gene--in this case the DNA greening necklace held 1195201 beads or 1044 genes.
Officially published Dec 1 in the journal G3 (Genes Genomics Genetics) the open-access research has been available online for several weeks and drawing global attention.
Chiu teamed with scientists at UC Davis Oregon State university the China National Gene Bank and the American Museum of Natural history as part of a $5. 8 million project on the biology and management of spotted wing drosophila funded by a U s. Department of agriculture Specialty Crops Research Initiative grant
& Food Research and the University of Otago has identified the gene controlling bulb development the first step in discovering genetic markers that can be used as tools to screen conventional breeding programmes for new onion varieties with the right genetic
Longer-term strategies focus on introducing genes to the Chinese oilseed rape plants to build disease resistance.
#Genetic mutation increases risk of Parkinsons disease from pesticidesa team of researchers has brought new clarity to the picture of how gene-environmental interactions can kill nerve cells that make dopamine.
Research and professor of biology at the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) used skin cells from Parkinson's patients that had a mutation in the gene encoding a protein called alpha-synuclein.
The team plans to explore additional molecular mechanisms that demonstrate how genes and the environment interact to contribute to Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and ALS.
The analysis of the Rhizophagus irregularis genome has revealed that this asexual fungus doesn't shuffle its genes the way researchers expected.
Moreover rather than having lost much of its metabolic genes as observed in many mutualistic organisms it has expanded its range of cell-to-cell communication genes
and phosphorus-capturing genes. A team led by The french National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA and including researchers from the Department of energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) reported the complete genome of R. irregularis (formerly Glomus intraradices) in a paper published online November 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National
Among the expanded portions of its genome R. irregularis had several genes for phosphorus metabolism
They also have an abundance of genes for communication between cells via signaling proteins including small secreted effectors highly expressed during symbiosis. Plant roots send out a plethora of chemical signals
and these genes probably help AMF interact with plants picking up the signals plants pump out.
Another surprise for the research team was in the genes that govern metabolism. Obligate parasites often have broken metabolism missing some genes in critical metabolic pathway
which make them dependent on their host Grigoriev said. We did not find such genes here.
R. irregularis has retained much of its metabolic machinery unlike many other obligate parasitic organisms. It leads a double-life extracting minerals from the soil
Though it has nearly 30000 protein-encoding genes R. irregularis has lost also hundreds of genes as a result of its close association with plants.
It has also cast off most of its genes for breaking down plant cell walls a critical ability for free-living fungi that feed off dead organic matter in soils.
and exhibited extensive collinearity across the gene space species-specific genes involved in stress tolerance such as ion transport ATPASE activity transcript factor activity
When studying the adaptation mechanisms to against salt stress researchers found that several gene families likely to be involved in tolerance to salt stress contain significantly more gene copies in the P. euphratica lineage.
and found some genes involved in ion transport and homeostasis such as Nhad1 KUP3 and NCL were distinctly upregulated under salt stress.
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