A study reported in the August 8th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, reveals the complete mitochondrial genome of a 38,000-year-old Neandertal. The findings open a window into the Neandertals’ past and helps answer lingering questions about our relationship to them. ‘ For the first time, we’ve built a sequence from ancient DNA that is essentially without error,’ said Richard Green of Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. The key is that they sequenced the Neandertal mitochondria-powerhouses of the cell with their own DNA including 13 protein-coding genes-nearly 35 times over. That impressive coverage allowed them to sort out those differences between the Neandertal and human genomes resulting from damage to the degraded DNA extracted from ancient bone versus true evolutionary changes. Although it is well established that Neandertals are the hominid form most closely related to present-day humans, their exact relationship to us remains uncertain, according to the researchers. The notion that Neandertals and humans may have ‘mixed’ is still a matter of some controversy. Analysis of the new sequence confirms that the mitochondria of Neandertal’s falls outside the variation found in humans today, offering no evidence of admixture between the […]
LA JOLLA, CA — Body weight and fertility have long known to be related to each other – women who are too thin, for example, can have trouble becoming pregnant. Now, a master switch has been found in the brain of mice that controls both, and researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say it may work the same way in humans. Findings from the study, published ahead of print in the Aug. 31 online edition of Nature Medicine, suggest that variations in the gene that produces this master switch, known as TORC1, could contribute a genetic component to obesity and infertility, and might be regulated with a novel drug. ‘This gene is crucial to the daisy chain of signals that run between body fat and the brain,’ says Marc Montminy, Ph.D., a professor in the Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, who led the study. ‘It likely plays a pivotal role in how much we, as humans, eat and whether we have offspring.’ It is just as important as leptin, the well-known star regulator of appetite, Montminy says, because leptin turns on TORC1, which in turn activates a number of genes known to help control […]
Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens). The research team has shown that early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals. Published today (26 August) in the Journal of Human Evolution, their discovery debunks a textbook belief held by archaeologists for more than 60 years. The team from the University of Exeter, Southern Methodist University, Texas State University, and the Think Computer Corporation, spent three years flintknapping (producing stone tools). They recreated stone tools known as ‘flakes,’ which were wider tools originally used by both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, and ‘blades,’ a narrower stone tool later adopted by Homo sapiens. Archaeologists often use the development of stone blades and their assumed efficiency as proof of Homo sapiens’ superior intellect. To test this, the team analysed the data to compare the number of tools produced, how much cutting-edge was created, the efficiency in consuming raw material and how long tools lasted. Blades were first produced by Homo sapiens during their colonization of Europe from Africa approximately […]
It is becoming clear and apparent that the current prevention methods to fight HIV/AIDS are not doing enough. This comes after new data by the CDC revealed that the number of HIV cases in New York City has spiked immensely…..New York (dbTechno) – It is becoming clear and apparent that the current prevention methods to fight HIV/AIDS are not doing enough. This comes after new data by the CDC revealed that the number of HIV cases in New York City has spiked immensely. The news came out this past week in a report that the number of new HIV infections in New York City was triple that of the national average. This means that the current HIV prevention methods in the city, as well as across the entire U.S., are not doing enough. There are roughly 6 people in the U.S. infected with HIV every single hour. HIV is the virus which is the cause of the AIDS pandemic, and can prove deadly. The biggest issue with prevention methods thus far has to do with people who are infected with the AIDS virus infecting those who do not have HIV/AIDS. A public health […]
Daily supplements of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids — the kind found in fish oil — reduced deaths and hospitalizations of people with heart failure, an Italian study found. But a cholesterol-lowering statin drug had no beneficial effect in a parallel heart failure trial. ‘This confirms what we’ve been seeing for a couple of decades in observational studies,’ Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, said of the fish oil trial. ‘There is a benefit of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids for heart failure patients.’ Both findings were published online Aug. 31 in the journalThe Lancetand presented at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, in Munich, Germany. The omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) study, done by a consortium of 357 Italian cardiology centers, enlisted more than 7,000 people diagnosed with heart failure, which is the progressive loss of the heart’s ability to pump blood. Half took a daily capsule containing omega-3 PUFA, the other half took a capsule with a placebo. The death rate in the PUFA group was 27 percent, compared to 29 percent in the placebo group. That reduction […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
