In its turn, Junior Party The University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") filed its motion in opposition to Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard...more
Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively, "Broad") filed its motion in opposition to Junior Party The University of California/Berkeley, the University...more
When it comes to SARS-CoV-2 infection (and resulting COVID-19), it seems our Neanderthal ancestors giveth and taketh away. Genetic material inherited from interbreeding between Neanderthals and early humans has been shown to...more
The wooly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an iconic animal, like the saber tooth tiger or dire wolf, from a time in human history when our position at the top of the global food chain was decidedly not assured (and being...more
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread throughout the globe, infecting more than 90 million people and causing almost two million deaths (see "Tracking coronavirus' global spread"). SARS-CoV-2 infection is the cause of the...more
The dire wolf (Canis dirus), prototype of the various wolves that were important members of the House Stark family of characters in Game of Thrones, was found uniquely in North America until its extinction in the late...more
Cancer, the "Emperor of All Maladies" as it has been termed, has been studied for millennia. President Nixon's "War on Cancer" resulted in slow but steady progress, aided by the biotechnology revolution, the development of...more
In the latest development in Interference No. 106,115 between Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively, "Broad") and Junior Party The University of...more
The Fountain of Youth -- an enduring aspiration, particularly as the ravages of age reduce human faculties prior to leading inexorably to death. Reduction in sight is the human faculty that can have the greatest effect on...more
Over the past decade, genetic archeology has revealed two branches of the human family tree, one known since the 19th Century (the Neanderthals) and the other more recently discovered (the Denisovans, an Asian relative of the...more
Almost three weeks ago, on October 31st, Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") filed its priority motion in Interference No. 106,115,...more
Svante Pääbo created the science of detecting Neanderthal DNA in archeological samples (and living humans) almost single-handedly (see Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes). So it will come as little surprise to many...more
Perception by the five human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) varies significantly between individuals and populations. Some use these differences to their advantage, such as sommeliers capable of detecting...more
There are an estimated 219 million cases of malaria per year, leading to more than 400,000 deaths annually according to the World Health Organization. Hemocytes (insect white blood cells) comprise the mosquito immune system...more
Turns Out, Early Humans Not the Cause of Woolly Rhinoceros Extinction -
Paleogenomics (the use of genetic analysis of DNA contained in ancient remains) has developed rapidly since Svante Pääbo first showed that DNA could...more
As the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life throughout the world this spring, bats have been a prominent feature in news stories and recriminations about how the pandemic started (and being blamed even more than happenings in...more
Genetic instability has long been recognized as a hallmark of oncogenesis and tumor progression. The phenomenon was first identified cytogenetically, most famously by the Philadelphia chromosome in chronic myelogenous...more
Measured by global dispersal alone, the common house mouse (Mus musculus ssp.) is the most successful invasive mammalian species. Perhaps surprisingly, the origin and history of this dispersal in the Western world has not be...more
Lions (Panthera leo) once were a widely distributed group of terrestrial mammals, ranging during the Pleistocene (from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago) in Eurasia, Africa, and North America, with species that included the...more
The human tendency to identify with tribes of "like" humans (related by family, place of origin, or religion, among other bases) was perverted during the Twentieth Century (and in some places remains so today) into the idea...more
Gregor Mendel's great good fortune (or extraordinary prescience) was that he chose for the traits he used to illustrate the genetic control of inheritance (despite having no inkling of its mechanism) traits in his pea plants...more
One of the wonders and satisfactions of modern science has been the elucidation (usually based in genetics) of the wonders of nature that have been famously observed but not explained until the proper tools (again, usually...more
The avocado, having gained popularity (at least in the U.S.) as a convenient (and delicious) vehicle for consuming otherwise not particularly healthful corn chips, has more recently been hailed as a "superfood" when consumed...more
The portion of the eukaryotic world inhabited by plants exhibits a genetic complexity not shared by members of the animal world (see, for example, "Rose Genome Reveals Its Exquisite Complexities"). The strawberry...more
A rose may be a rose may be a rose (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein) but genetically roses (like many plant species) are wickedly complex. The genus Rosa comprises about 200 species, although only 8-20 species are thought to...more