“[P]eople who were homozygous (had two copies) of this protective gene variant
involved in antigen presentation were 40 percent more likely to survive the
plague than those with two copies of a deleterious variant, which encodes a
broken protein.”
posted 11/3/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[T]he ancient wolf genomes clustered together in time. That is, a given wolf
was most likely to be closely related to other wolves alive at around the same
time, no matter where those wolves lived on the planet.”
posted 10/2/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[T]he pfhrp2 deletions had arisen recently and hadn’t had time for mutation and
recombination to scramble the DNA sequences nearby. So,
all the [malaria] parasites that carry the pfhrp2 deletion seemed to have
inherited it from the same ancestor, that ancestor was very recent, and there
was a selective pressure that was driving the expansion of parasites that
inherited the deletion.”
posted 8/12/2022 8:00pm ∞
“The researchers conclude the South American DNA was
introduced in the Marquesas, a group of islands northeast of Tahiti, shortly
after 1100 CE . Over the next hundred
years, it spread south from there and eventually on to Rapa Nui.”
posted 3/25/2021 9:38pm ∞
“Translated, the inscription reads, ‘May this tusk root out the lice of the hair
and the beard.’ … This purpose was confirmed when the authors searched for
evidence of head lice on the comb under a microscope and found some remains on
the second tooth, still in the nymph stage of development.”
(See also the discussion at Language
Hat .)
posted 11/23/2022 8:00pm ∞