Skin tone has varied greatly among humans for at least the last 900,000 years. So concludes an analysis of the genetic variants associated with skin pigmentation in people from several regions of Africa. The latest findings suggest that some particularly dark skin tones evolved relatively recently from paler genetic variants. Image: llamnudds
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Deep in the Amazon, geneticists have found an unexpected Australian twist to the story of how the Americas were founded. Image: Orlando Calheiros
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Not too long ago, the founding of Europe seemed beguilingly simple. Our species arrived 45,000 years ago from the Middle East, outcompeted the Neanderthals, and that was that. But ancient DNA studies have led to a revolution in European prehistory studies. Image: Effervescing Elephant
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Carrying a copy of the “Alzheimer’s gene” doesn’t significantly raise a man’s risk of developing the disease. The gene does increase a woman’s risk, but women with one copy of the gene were as likely to develop the disease as men with no copies. Image: ACDbio
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Last month, two groups announced that they had performed a mind-boggling feat. They targeted and disabled nearly every one of our genes in cells growing in a dish. The genetic engineering tool used to perform the task has been in development for little more than a year – but it promises to revolutionise gene editing. Image: Martina Gobec
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Are you a south paw? a port-sider? A new study into what makes people left-handed shows that some of the genes that control asymmetries in the body also help to determine hand preference. Image: Mktp
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Family values may have declined over the 20th century, but blood remains thicker than water...
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The Black Death continues to cast a shadow across England. Although the modern English population is more cosmopolitan than ever, the plagues known as the Black Death killed so many people in the Middle Ages that, to this day, genetic diversity is lower in England than it was in the 11th century. Image: swanksalot
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