Genes Reveal the Ancient Battle Between Man and Virus
	Viruses have always been part of our evolutionary process, constantly mutating in order to defeat the immune system, at the same time triggering changes in the structure of the DNA, which eventually gave us defense mechanisms that still work today. Some types of viruses, known as retroviruses, even have the capability of inserting themselves into the DNA, leaving traces of their existence in our genes. Such an ancient retrovir ... [read more >>]
	22 July 2008, 10:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Africans Are More Susceptible to HIV Infection
	The same genetic variation that offered African people better protection against malaria seems to be responsible for an increase of nearly 40 percent in the chances of contracting the HIV virus, while in infected individuals the respective genes appear to increase their lifespan by almost two years, according to a study carried out by Professor Robin Weiss of the University of College London Infection and Immunity. Data collec ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2008, 09:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

DNA Sewing Made Easy
	How can one bond two DNA strands without breaking them? Well, by using a micro-sized DNA sewing machine of course! An article published in the Royal Society of Chemistry Journal Lab on a Chip has recently detailed an invention created by Japanese scientists which allows researchers to bond and manipulate individual DNA strands into long shapes without running the risk of breaking them in the process. Bonding an individual DNA ... [read more >>]
	14 July 2008, 05:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Male Infertility Linked to Diabetes
	According to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology the increase in the number of men suffering from infertility could be directly linked to the increasing number of men suffering from diabetes. Apparently, the DNA damage in sperm cells of men with diabetes is harder to repair by specialized genes, which are less active than in the case of healthy individuals, although sperm cells seem to be perfectly healthy when viewed ... [read more >>]
	09 July 2008, 08:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

DNA and RNA Came from Space
	For some reason or another, all of us like to believe that Earth is special - after all, our planet is the only one able to sustain life that we know of. Indeed, Earth is special in its own way, but life would not have been possible without the significant contribution of material coming form space. In fact, a new study shows that the compounds making up DNA and RNA actually originated in space, not on Earth as previously thought, and were ... [read more >>]
	14 June 2008, 04:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Lancaster 365 Cellular Elixir
	Lancaster cosmetics has developed an innovative formula for anti-aging skincare and cell rejuvenation, based on the concept that the secret for a long-lasting youthful complexion lies in our skin's DNA. As a result, they developed a revolutionary serum aptly called "365 Cellular Elixir" which helps provide a unique, personalized brand of intelligent skincare which adapts to every woman's unique cellular needs. ... [read more >>]
	05 June 2008, 11:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Organisms Gave up Sexual Reproduction for DNA Theft
	In animals the genetic material is inherited from the parents after conception. No other later action, except for rare parasitic infections that can modify your genetic material by inserting some of their DNA strands, can alter your DNA. But in bdelloid rotifers, a microscopic freshwater animal, such events happen all the time. Its DNA appears to contain a series of genes transferred from bacteria, fungi and even plants. The discovery w ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2008, 09:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Egypt Wants DNA Test to Identify Pharaoh Mummy
	This is the second time Egypt conducts DNA tests in order to identify the mummy of an important pharaoh. Last year, the Egyptian authorities carried out a test involving the mummy of a female believed to be Queen Hatshepsut, but the results have never been disclosed. This time the 3,500 year old mummy of what experts believe to be the remains of one of the most important pharaohs in the history of Egypt, King Thutmose I, will be subjected ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2008, 04:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Tasmanian Tiger Genes Inserted in Mice DNA for Study
	The last Tasmanian tiger, thylacine, died in captivity in 1936 at Hobart Zoo after being hunted to extinction during the early 1900s. Fortunately, some thylacine pouch young and adult tissues were preserved in alcohol by museums around the world. One of those is Museum Victoria in Melbourne which donated some samples to the University of Melbourne and the University of Texas, to be used in a study investigating the functionality of the thy ... [read more >>]
	20 May 2008, 09:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Gender of a Child Determined at 6 Weeks of Pregnancy
	Are you eager to know the sex of your unborn child? Normally, you have to wait 4-5 months until ultrasound scanning can tell you that but, now, it is possible that you wait a shorter period of time. Many women are not even aware they’re pregnant at the date when this new method can already tell them if it’s a he or she they’re expecting. Lorgen GP (a spin-off of the University of Granada) and Fetal Medicine Unit of the Materni ... [read more >>]
	14 May 2008, 10:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Genetics Track Down the Origin of the Druze People
	The Druze people are a religious community from the Middle East. Initially, it started as an offshoot of the Ismaili sect of Islam, but also incorporated Gnostic, neo-Platonic and other philosophies, a fact that made Islamic scholars regard it as a non-Muslim sect. A new research, published in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that the Druze people of Israel have a wide array of ancient DNA lineages which, in turn, would explain more of the hist ... [read more >>]
	12 May 2008, 05:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Secret of the World's Largest Bacterium Revealed
	This is like the blue whale of the bacterial world. Epulopiscium is as big as a mountain when compared to other bacteria, having the size of a grain of salt and being a million times larger than the common E. coli bacteria: you can see it with the naked eye. A new study carried out at Cornell and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal has unveiled the secret of this gigantism: it consists in the ability of ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 03:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Method Catches Rapists in 30 to 45 Minutes
	DNA is the irrefutable proof in many outstanding criminal cases. However, about 250,000 DNA samples aimed to detect a rapist can remain anywhere from 3 to 12 months in forensic laboratories backlogs, and this gives suspects more than enough time to make themselves disappear. The issue could be solved by Jessica Voorhees Norris, a Ph.D. candidate in forensic chemistry at the University of Virginia: her newly developed method f ... [read more >>]
	08 May 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

We Were on the Verge of Extinction 70,000 Years Ago
	Over 6.6 billion people inhabit the planet today. With all that, 70,000 years ago, no more than 2,000 people existed, as revealed by a new research carried out at Stanford University and published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. 70,000 years ago, our species was represented only by a small isolated African population, fighting to survive severe drought. "This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetic ... [read more >>]
	29 April 2008, 04:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Criminals Caught by Test Faster and Cheaper than DNA Analysis
	Criminals have no chance. A new human identification test relying on antibodies seems to be faster and cheaper than DNA testing, besides requiring minimal training in the field, improving the arsenal of detectives, forensic experts and the military. Our antibody signature is as unique as our DNA, and antibodies, proteins fighting against germs, can be tracked from blood, saliva or other bodily fluids. "DNA is a physical code that ... [read more >>]
	29 April 2008, 04:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Software Detects Your Ancestry in Minutes
	In a world of intense migration and immigration, who can tell where his/her roots are? In fact, countries like US, Canada and Australia are mainly made of more or less recent immigrants. This is more than a question of identity. Various human populations display different genetic predispositions to diseases. Our physic says some about our family tree, but that information does not go to lower branches. No problem. A team made of comput ... [read more >>]
	15 April 2008, 04:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Fastest Evolving Animal: Tuatara
	The tuatara is by far the oldest reptile inhabiting the planet, a living fossil that survived isolated in the New Zealand, protected from competition and predation of other animal groups. Surprisingly, a DNA analysis published in the journal "Trends in Genetics," carried out by a team led by evolutionary biologist and ancient DNA expert Professor David Lambert at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, has c ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 05:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

DNA Tracks Down Bursts of HIV Infection
	The idea that HIV infiltrated slow and steady in London is infirmed by a new research. The study published in "PLoS Medicine" shows that the rapid growth of the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the late 1990s, in the gay community of London, was episodic, with multiple clusters of transmission in a few years, explaining the doubling of the number of the cases during that period. Usually, reconstruction of sexual contact networks has ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Skulls Say It: Humans and Neanderthals Split 300,000-400,000 Years Ago
	Our closest evolutionary relative was the Neanderthal man (Homo neanderthalensis). But when did we share a common ancestor? A new research published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" shows that gradual changes in human skull size and shape would indicate that, 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals and modern humans separated their evolutionary pathways. All previous estimates were DNA analy ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 03:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

DNA Says: Amerindians Originated from 6 "Founding Mothers"
	Of course, it was not Gitche Manitou their creator. All the Red Skins, from those of North America to those of South America, came from Asia. A new DNA study published in the journal "PLoS One" shows that 6 women founded about 95% of the populations of the modern Native Americans, 20,000 years ago. "The finding does not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 03:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

White People Are Less Genetically Diverse Than Black (African) People
	Europe may be called the Old Continent, but its current population has a rather recent origin. And a new research published in the journal "Nature" shows that white European people are less genetically diverse, carrying more harmful mutations, than the black Africans. The results point that a population "bottleneck" could have been involved in the original colonization of Europe or the evolution of the white race. P ... [read more >>]
	21 February 2008, 03:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

IBM Is Working on DNA-Based processors
	IBM scientists are currently researcher on linking DNA molecules with conductive carbon nanotubes. The procedure is extremely complicated because of the small scale the engineers are forced to work at. Once the carbon nanotubes are interconnected, the DNA can be shed off, leaving just an orderly grid of nanotubes. The grid itself is a data storage matrix, but at the same time it can perform basic calculations. "These are ... [read more >>]
	20 February 2008, 08:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Identical Twins Are Not 100% Genetically Identical!
	We know that twins are of two types. Some twins come from two different eggs fecundated by two different sperms (this means they can have different genders); they are just ordinary brothers born at the same moment. This are called dizygotic or non-indentical twins and, like any brothers, they share usually 40-60 % of their DNA. The second category of twins are identical or monozygotic twins, when two embryos develop from one ... [read more >>]
	20 February 2008, 05:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Modern Birds Appeared 100 Million Years Ago!
	The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived 150 million years ago, but this species and its relatives can be hardly differentiated from dinosaurs. And for about 90 million years on, fossil birds had been toothed, being very different from the modern types. Fossils resembling modern birds started to appear around the demise of the dinosaurs. But a new research published in the journal "BMC Biology" and made by a team ... [read more >>]
	06 February 2008, 03:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Children With Three Biological Parents?
	Common knowledge says that a child has two parents. But what about three biological parents? A team at the Newcastle University has created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man, a technology that one day could be a therapy for couples, for getting kids free of genetic diseases. Still, these embryos are primarily produced by one man and one woman. "We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying t ... [read more >>]
	06 February 2008, 02:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Telepathy Found in DNA!
	Telepathy sounds like something out of the freak show, or SF stories. But, this trait has been found to be displayed by the DNA molecules. DNA double helixes can recognize fitting sequences from a distance and then join together, without the implication of enzymes or other molecules. Researchers had not suspected that the DNA double helixes could sort themselves. The DNA helixes are chains of 4 joined nucleotide bases (A, T, C and G). B ... [read more >>]
	28 January 2008, 03:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

DNA Test for Europe from Google Firm
	Last November saw the launch of the 999 bucks DNA service in the U.S. from a firm that has Google as a founding father. It was an instant success and requests for it started pouring in from all across the world. After polling them together, the managing wing of the 23andMe company decided that Europe and Canada were the next on the "expansion" list. The service will be presented by the two co-founders, Linda Avey and ... [read more >>]
	22 January 2008, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Polynesians Came from Taiwan
	What's behind the racial mix we call Polynesians and Micronesians (and think about from Hawaiians to Maori)? A new research carried out by a team led by Jonathan Friedlaender points that the race of the Pacific islanders could be the result of East Asians who quickly island-hopped through Melanesia (New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and nearby archipelagos of Vanuatu and Fiji), inhabited by the so-called Black Asians. The new DNA a ... [read more >>]
	21 January 2008, 03:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

First Human Embryo Clones Ever!
	A cloned Scarlet Johanson may be the dream of any man and a Californian company has just made the first step toward this purpose: for the first time, scientists have achieved cloned human embryos using DNA extracted from adult skin cells, as reported in the Stem Cells journal. "That's an important first step toward generating embryonic stem (ES) cell lines from such embryos, which can be used to study and treat diseases such ... [read more >>]
	18 January 2008, 04:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Scientists Discover Heredity Skipping DNA!
	We all know that how we look, behave and function is a question of genes. And genes are made of DNA. But now, a team at Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, in a research to be published in the journal "Nature", challenges this. They have found an "epigenetic" pathway bypassing DNA, in a type of Lamarckian evolution, which says that an organism transmits to its offspring traits acquired d ... [read more >>]
	07 January 2008, 04:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Not One, but Six Giraffe Species!
	There's nothing taller on Earth: large giraffe bulls can be 6 m (20 ft) tall, and weigh up to 1.5 tonnes! If you look at giraffes across the African savannas, you'll see that they all look the same. With one exception: the shape and color of their spots. A new DNA research published in "BMC Biology" shows that there is more than that: those different models betray, in fact, different giraffe species. At least six. ... [read more >>]
	28 December 2007, 05:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Beetles Are Much Older than Dinosaurs
	There are more described beetle species than all the other described animal species. And it is believed that there are even more undescribed species, by the order of millions, to be included into the beetles' Coleoptera Order, with 17 "superfamilies" and 168 families. Many will disappear before description, as we destroy their environments. But, a new research published in the journal "Science" explains this t ... [read more >>]
	27 December 2007, 05:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Smallest Genome: What's the Minimum DNA Amount for Life?
	The human body functions based on the activity of about 35,000 genes, comprised in 3 billion DNA bases. And even the bacteria needs hundreds of genes to cope with their metabolic functions. But there must be an extreme of functioning genes into an organism at which life is possible. German researchers discovered in 2002, in northern Iceland, a very odd microbe inhabiting the volcanic bed of the sea. These bacteria reproduce only in ver ... [read more >>]
	13 December 2007, 06:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Humans Are Evolving Faster than Ever Now!
	If you think that human evolution has stopped, you're extremely wrong: in fact, it has just sped up! And people on various continents are just turning more different. "Humans are evolving rapidly, and that the pace of change has accelerated a lot in the last 40,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age roughly 10,000 years ago," said Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology, at the University of ... [read more >>]
	07 December 2007, 04:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mutant Sperm Map Guides to Deadly Mutations
	Those little naughty sperms seem to have an increased vulnerability to mutation. The team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute focused on four unstable areas in the DNA where rearrangements cause genetic diseases called genomic disorders, and discovered that some of these mutations were more frequent in sperm than believed. In 2006, the same team led by Dr Matt Hurles revealed that losses or duplication of DNA stretches of the human ... [read more >>]
	04 December 2007, 07:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Lincoln Could Have Suffered From a Rare Deadly Mutation
	Man, this wasn't the most handsome American president... This year a research was made on laser scans of a bronze and a plaster copy of two masks of Lincoln's face, belonging to the Chicago History Museum. This revealed a high degree of facial asymmetry: Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right one, a developmental condition named hemifacial microsomia, caused by many factors, from smallpox and heart illness to trau ... [read more >>]
	27 November 2007, 06:34GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Genes Explain How Native Americans Entered America
	There is a vivid debate if Native Americans from both South America and North America entered the continent in a single wave 12,000 years ago coming from Siberia through the Bering Strait land bridge or whether ancient Americans also came from other Asian areas or Polynesia, coming by sea as well as by land, starting 30,000 years ago. Paleontologists have found Negroid remains in South America older than 12,000 years, resembling Black race ... [read more >>]
	27 November 2007, 02:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Why Are Males More Evolved Than Females?
	Males change faster than females. Just look at a peacock’s tail feathers compared to the plain peahen. In most species, males are brighter and better singers, competing for getting as much as possible mates. This way they experience sexual selection. This overdrive compared to females puzzle the scientists, as they share the same genes with the females. In a new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ... [read more >>]
	15 November 2007, 06:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Are The Genes and the DNA?
	From the color of your hair, eyes, and skin, face shape to all your skills and the way you laugh – everything’s a combination of genetics, and how the activity of your genes was shaped by the environment. You may have told your lover she has her father’s big blue eyes and her mother’s soft skin. Well, that's perfectly true: genes are inherited from the parents. Our bodies are made of about 100,000 billion cells. Inside the nucleus ... [read more >>]
	07 November 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Giant Forest Pig Discovered!
	These are the New World's native wild boars: the peccaries. And till now, the largest pig-like species have stood hidden from scientists in the southeastern Amazon region of Brazil. It is the largest peccary in the world, about the size of a large dog. The new species, the forest giant peccary (Pecari maximus) was discovered first in 2004 in the basin of the Rio Aripuanã and recent DNA analysis made at the Leiden Centre for Env ... [read more >>]
	05 November 2007, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How and When Did HIV Enter the US?
	At the beginning of the '80s, US received a sudden shock with the discovery of HIV. The killer was there, later it was found it originated in Africa, but how did it enter the US? Now we finally know: through Haiti, brought by just one person around 1969, much earlier than previously thought! That was the HIV-1 type, and it entered the U.S., from where it spread worldwide. "Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned ... [read more >>]
	30 October 2007, 04:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Most Common Sexually Transmitted Disease Induces Severe Male Sterility
	I’m sure you’re quite well informed on many aspects related to HIV, syphilis or gonorrhea, but the STD you're more likely to experience is Chlamydia, the "Silent Epidemic" (called so because in women it may not induce any symptoms and will linger for months or years before being diagnosed). In men, Chlamydia can sometimes induce abnormal discharge from the penis and swelling of the testicles, but it is silent in most subject ... [read more >>]
	25 October 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

BitTorrent Seeking to Reduce the Amount of Pirated Content
	It's a well-known fact that consumers who are looking to distribute pirated content on the web are usually attracted by BitTorrent because it offers high download and upload speeds and reliable connections. Because of that, the amount of the pirated content distributed through BitTorrent grew up a lot so the parent company was urged to take attitude in order to reduce it. Today, BitTorrent officially rolled out its Delivery ... [read more >>]
	10 October 2007, 04:34GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Giant Jungle Ox, Proven to be Real Species
	When kouprey (Bos sauveli) was first found in 1937, nobody could believe it: an almost one tonne heavy beast undiscovered by science until the middle of the 20th century! Wrapped in mystery, this extremely rare ox with curving horns has been an icon of Southeast Asian conservation. But the debate was focused on whether the new ox was a species by itself or just a hybrid. A recent DNA analysis revealed that Cambodia's national anim ... [read more >>]
	08 October 2007, 04:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Neanderthals Reached China!
	Neanderthals' ancestors evolved in Europe 350,000 years ago and by 130,000 years ago, genuine Neanderthals were already present. Almost 28,000 years ago they were gone, wiped out by modern men or by intermingling with them. Neanderthal remains have been found from Spain to Middle East (Israel) and Central Asia (Uzbekistan). Now, a new area must be added onto their range: China, appearing that our evolutionary cousin migr ... [read more >>]
	01 October 2007, 04:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mammoths Could be Cloned Starting From Their Hair
	In the end, extinct species could be revived not only with DNA coming from the body's tissue but also from hair! Hair has been found to be a better source of ancient DNA than bone or muscle in a research made on woolly mammoths. "The main problem with things like bone is that it contains real DNA from the source, but also a load of DNA that is undesirable. For example, when a mammoth dies and the body starts putrefying, bacte ... [read more >>]
	28 September 2007, 02:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

74,000 Years Ago, the Human Species Was at the Brink of Extinction
	The 6 billion humans inhabiting the Earth are here by sheer casualty. 74,000 years ago, the human species was at the brink of extinction, with a mere census of 2,000 individuals who finally managed to overcome the crisis and transmit their genetic pool to the modern man. The crisis coincided with the first migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa. Scientists cannot even say if the about 2,000 surviving humans formed a sole po ... [read more >>]
	27 September 2007, 15:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

No More Elephant-People?
	There are freaks paying big sums of money for silicon injections that allegedly help them develop huge genitalia. Some got it naturally, cost-free and really unwittingly. It's about elephant people, patients with elephantiasis, a parasite disease induced by worms called filariasis, that block the lymphatic vessels. This determines the accumulation of liquid that causes changes into the surrounding tissues translated into grossly e ... [read more >>]
	24 September 2007, 06:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Breakthrough: New Method Assesses the Risk of Breast Cancer in a Matter of Hours
	It strongly affects a woman's feminity, while attempting on her life. And the earlier the diagnosis, the better the chances of survival. But a new "breakthrough" method in the detection of breast cancer developed by a team at the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle University could significantly cut the cost and time required to check for the presence of BRCA1 gene, which increases by 80 % the vulnerabilit ... [read more >>]
	22 September 2007, 04:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Breakthrough: The First Human Gene Linked to Height Ever Discovered!
	Do funny dumb hair dues and wearing high heels make you look taller? Scientists have known for more than a century that this is hereditary. Common people have known it since ever. But now an international team at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Children’s Hospital Boston, the University of Oxford and Peninsula Medical School, Exeter, has found the first gene whose variation is linked to height variation in humans. The team l ... [read more >>]
	04 September 2007, 07:34GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia