Not settled after all partial genetic explaination of eye color. it's not one classic dominant/recessive allele a la the monk Mendel. three known + unknown genes involved, everybody's still beautiful.
posted by longsleeves on Dec 8, 2005 - 19 comments

Sure... the liger has been getting all the cross-species press lately (with the jackalope getting a close second), but what about the growing menace of the cabbit?
posted by ph00dz on Aug 25, 2004 - 10 comments

Author challenges Darwin's theory of "sexual selection." To Darwin, mutations that don't enhance survival, like peacocks' tails, must be aids to attracting mates to pass on genes. Homosexuality, therefore, is to Darwin and the Christian-right both an unnatural aberration. But with ever growing evidence of homsexual behavior in animals, from bonobos to penguins, isn't it time that Darwin's theory get replaced?
posted by dnash on Apr 15, 2004 - 55 comments

Gene Stories. "If your parents kept on having children, they’d have to visit the maternity hospital another million billion times to stand a chance of producing another child with your genes" (unless you're an identical twin of course).
posted by lola on Sep 19, 2003 - 5 comments

In lieu of today's posts on GM foods and meat, Trans Ova Genetics is pharming cows in hopes of creating one capable of adminstering human antibodies.
posted by hobbes on Aug 25, 2003 - 5 comments

Biological Incident Even the food industry is concerned when medicinally-modified crops spread their genes to food crops. How can accidental or intentional contamination be stopped? Is even the USDA's power to quarantine and destroy enough?
posted by kablam on Nov 16, 2002 - 2 comments

It's New, It's Wonderful, it's....No Cry Onions! from the nature.com website, scientists have identified the enzyme that causes a "tickling" of your tear ducts, ergo the ensuing crying. More genetically altered food - how are we feeling about this?
posted by djspicerack on Oct 16, 2002 - 36 comments

Attack of the Hollywood Clones Flametracker investigates how some actors are being cloned so that they can work on twice as many projects. See also Julia Roberts and Monica Potter, Keira Knightly and Natalie Portman, Robert Redford and Brad Pitt ...
posted by feelinglistless on Apr 25, 2002 - 18 comments

We may grow old because we don't get cancer. Researchers have identified a gene called p53 whose function is to minimize tumors, but it may also cause aging as a side effect.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jan 2, 2002 - 14 comments

Glowing Pig News Great to take to parties..... (Hurrah for my first ever link that hasn't been found in previous threads...)
posted by Spoon on Oct 12, 2001 - 13 comments

A major advance in genetically modified foods. Developed with government funding, and intended eventually to be given away to farmers, there has been a major success in the use of salt water to irrigate crops. They've developed a tomato which grows fine in salt water or on salty soil. Thousands of lives will be saved in parts of the world where fresh water for irrigation is scarce, including up to one third of the arable land in India where salt has been accumulating. Interestingly, these tomatoes are so good at what they do that they remove salt from the soil, improving it. The genetic modification which was done to these tomatoes should be possible with many other crops, including especially rice (on which major effort in Egypt is underway now).
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jul 30, 2001 - 39 comments

"Mr. Dyson, I'm pleased to inform you that your grandmother didn't sleep around."
posted by lagado on Jun 10, 2001 - 8 comments

I come from a long line of inbreeders. No more laughing at them there bills from the hills! It seems all us white folk are related to only 50 frisky ancestors!
posted by srboisvert on May 10, 2001 - 14 comments

Within a year, one authority expects, a judge will declare fingerprint evidence unscientific. The Age of Genetics is upon us. I didn't know twins have identical DNA, but different fingerprints. And, for other reasons as well, fingerprinting will still be used. Just not the standard anymore.
posted by aflakete on Apr 8, 2001 - 4 comments

Gould, earthworms and you: Stephen Jay Gould discusses the recent discovery that the human body has only about 1/4th of the DNA originally estimated. NYTimes op-ed piece. One of the best results of this discovery is that it sounds death knell of reductionist biology; as usual, the human body turns out to be more complicated than anyone could have imagined. ("Gee, we haven't explained life, the universe and everything? Gosh darnit!") I have always thought it was silly to ascribe artistic talent, criminal behaviour, musical aptitude or computer savvy to the foibles of some single gene. Now here's independent confirmation of that opinion...

So once again we find that we ourselves, and not our parents or our grandparents, are responsible for who we are and what we become...
posted by hanseugene on Feb 19, 2001 - 14 comments

The Human Genome in Human Context: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Genome.
posted by tallman on Dec 27, 2000 - 0 comments

Mutants with 4-colour vision! And you thought the magnetic kid was just the beginning...
posted by hobbes on Nov 28, 2000 - 22 comments

What is scarier than a cloned dinosaur?
posted by thirteen on Sep 20, 2000 - 22 comments

The rabbit is out of the hat when it comes to frivolous genetic manipulation of living creatures. And he glows in the dark.
posted by rcade on Sep 18, 2000 - 6 comments

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Human Genome Project completed!!!!!
posted by grumblebee on Jun 25, 2000 - 7 comments

if this gene ever gets in kudzu, we're doomed
posted by crawdad on Jun 2, 2000 - 8 comments

Okay, this is just plain wrong.
posted by veruca on May 18, 2000 - 15 comments