Monthly Archives: August 2016

Revised estimates for number of bacterial and human cells “in a human body”

This (accurate) information is what every genomicist and molecular biologist needs to know, … in order to be the hit of cocktail party conversations.  Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders … Continue reading

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“Charles Darwin” Essay on Facebook

Hecktoen International, a Journal of Medical Humanities, posted an article by Daniel W. Nebert.  pdf link is here. Title and first few paragraphs are here: Link to the Hectoen website for the full article is HERE. Darwin’s ideas: supported by … Continue reading

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Analysis of 264 complete genomes from 12 E coli populations … in a 50,000-generation experiment

Anyone who thinks that ‘evolution is not going on, around us, all the time’ … needs to revise his/her thinking. The Lenski lab in 1988 (at Michigan State) began a carefully-controlled experiment with bacteria (E. coli) growing on a defined … Continue reading

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Emergence of a Homo sapiens-specific autism-related gene family on Chr 16p11.2 CNV susceptibility, having arisen by natural selection

Genetic differences that specify unique aspects of human evolution have typically been identified by comparative analyses between the genomes of humans and closely related primates—including more recently the genomes of Homo neaderthalensis and Homo denisoviensis. Not all regions of the … Continue reading

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Cell now admits to ‘having no editorial integrity whatsoever’

This article is posted on the web site,  forbetterscience.com Just more evidence as to how rampant “cheating” and “deception” have become among “scientists” performing scientific research. LINK HERE  Another LINK HERE Here is a second posting, one day later, concerning … Continue reading

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Genetic and environmental risk for chronic pain and the contribution of risk variants for major depressive disorder (MDD): family studies

This findings from this study [see below] are pretty wild. And curious. Authors queried whether genetic factors and the environment you share with your nuclear family, siblings, or spouse––may determine your risk of chronic pain. Depression is also associated with … Continue reading

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Whole-genome exome sequencing (WES) of 60,706 humans found 3,230 human genes that do not tolerate loss of function mutations., and two-thirds have no disease associated with them (so far)

Exomes are those portions of our DNA that gets transcribed into messenger-RNA (mRNA) and then translated into proteins (gene products). Large-scale reference data sets of human genetic variation will be critical for the medical and functional interpretation of DNA sequence … Continue reading

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Fossils of archaic hominins hold amazing secrets to the history of human evolution

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Distribution of H3K4me3/H3K27me3 chromatin in male germ cells of six vertebrate species: evidence as to what specifies animal development

The nomenclature of chromatin containing the H3 family of histones, the amino acid lysine (K), at amino acid residue position 4 (counting from the N-terminus), having three methyl groups added (m3) is abbreviated “H3K4me3”. The attached paper tracks the distribution … Continue reading

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Genetic architecture controlling alcohol preference in rat lines divergently bred for alcohol-loving vs alcohol-avoiding behavior

Investigations on the influence of nature vs nurture on alcoholism (Alcohol Use Disorder) in human have yet to provide a clear view on potential genomic etiologies. To address this problems, authors [see attached paper] studied high (HAD) and low (LAD) … Continue reading

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