Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/chimpanzee genome

  • Cottoning on to genome duplications

    Cotton, courtesy of the USDA. What do electrons have to do with our ability to spin this into yarn? Image via Wikimedia Commons.   by Chris Gunter, Science Education Editor, DXS   Plants are hard. Not in the physical way, but in the genomics way: It’s been estimated that 75% of domesticated plant genomes are polyploid, meaning they have up to 12 sets of each chromosome in every cell. This makes genome sequencing crazily diffi…

    Authored by on December 19, 2012

  • What’s on your wishlist?

    …board for that iPad or iPhone? Look no further than the Cube Laser Digital Keyboard ($180) . What about other great gadgets? The DOTKLOK (from $150) is an open-source and hackable digital clock. It also consumes 2W for power! Runners and cyclists who love their gadgets may like the Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS watch ($320). Track your workouts, train like a pro, and analyze all the data this watch feeds to you for the height of fitnes…

    Authored by on November 23, 2012

  • Creating viruses to create the vaccines?

    Synthetic viruses could mean a faster flu vax. by Carrie Arnold     In 2009, scientists scrambled to develop a vaccine against the H1N1 influenza pandemic. Although the first cases of illness were reported in March, a vaccine wasn’t ready in the U.S. until late September — a lag of almost seven months. Large amounts of vaccine weren’t available until several months after that. By then, the second wave of infections had peaked, as had much…

    Authored by on May 20, 2013

  • Dinosaur Aunts, Bacterial Stowaways, & Insect Milk

    …eggs in a variety of terrestrial environments. As other mutations randomly arose and were favored by selection, milk composition became increasingly complex, incorporating nutritive, protective, and hormonal factors (Oftedal 2012). Some of these milk constituents are shunted into milk from maternal blood, some- although also present in the maternal blood stream- are regulated locally in the mammary gland, and some very special constituents are u…

    Authored by on July 17, 2012

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    …almost twice as likely to say that they don’t want to live or work near a person with mental illness if they read an article about a person with mental illness involved in a mass shooting, according to a study published March 20 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Interestingly, this tendency is the same even if the article avoids any mention of mental illness. This may be because this link between violence and mental illness is deeply engrain…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • Biology Xplainer: Evolution and how it happens

    …he population will change over time. It will be adapted to its environment. It will evolve. Other mechanisms of evolution A pigeon depicted in Charles Darwin’sVariation of Animals and PlantsUnder Domestication, 1868. U.S.public domain image, via Wikimedia. When Darwin presented his idea of natural selection, he knew he had an audience to win over. He pointed out that people select features of organisms all the time and breed the…

    Authored by on January 29, 2012

  • Inspirations in science: It’s very, very personal

    …h Jane Goodall! [Photo credits: Jane Goodall via Wikimedia Commons, Jane Goodall with her stuffed animal chimpanzee, which accompanies her during travel. Photo taken by  user:Jeek  in  w:Hong Kong University ,  Hong Kong  on 24 October 2004; Mean Girls, via the Teens Don't Know Movies blog; Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, senator and Nobel winner, via Wikimedia Commons.]…

    Authored by on November 10, 2011

  • Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

    …n controversial. What’s new is the “Are You Dense?” patient movement and legislation to inform women that they have dense breasts. Merits and pitfalls of device approval The approval of breast ultrasound hinges on a study of 200 women with dense breast evaluated retrospectively at 13 sites across the United States with mammography and ultrasound. The study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when ultrasound was…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

  • Autism and the DSM-5

    …ial social aspect of this change, and the one thing that might, when it comes to autism, elevate the DSM-5 above the level of doorstop. [Image credit: Dave Bullock, UK, via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.]…

    Authored by on April 23, 2013

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