Genetics:
What does not kill the group, makes it stronger! permlink
Category: Genetics
I recently finished reading The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, a new book by Nicholas Wade, a science writer for The New York Times. Before giving it the "full treatment" I thought it behooved me to...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 8:34 AM • 9 Comments •
The grandmothers effect, paternal or maternal matters (?) permlink
Category: Anthroplogy
I've discussed menopause as an adaptation and the grandmother effect before. I was also pleased to see the responses of Larry Moran's readers when he presented his standard anti-adaptationist line of argument. I don't want to retread familiar ground here,...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 6:02 AM • 2 Comments •
Hutterites are like Icelanders permlink
Category: Genetics
The Spittoon points to a new paper, Drawing the history of the Hutterite population on a genetic landscape: inference from Y-chromosome and mtDNA genotypes, which I've been meaning to look at more closely. Unlike some attempts to use genetics to...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 5:15 AM • 3 Comments •
Svante Paabo believes modern humans & Neandertals interbred permlink
Category: Genetics
Neanderthals 'had sex' with modern man: Professor Svante Paabo, director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, will shortly publish his analysis of the entire Neanderthal genome, using DNA retrieved from fossils. He aims...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 5:25 PM • 11 Comments •
Inferring deep history in genes permlink
Category: Genetics
When Mendelism reemerged in the early 20th century to become what we term genetics no doubt the early practitioners of the nascent field would have been surprised to see where it went. The centrality of of DNA as the substrate...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 3:48 AM • 6 Comments •
What's going on at ASHG 2009? permlink
Category: Genetics
If you haven't been following the goings-on via Twitter, Luke Jostins has been posting some tidbits on his blog, Genetic Inference. If you get interested in something, remember you can search abstracts....
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Posted by Razib Khan at 1:11 AM • 0 Comments •
The arcs of evolutionary genetics always cross back permlink
Category: Evolution
If you have more than a marginal interest in evolutionary biology you will no doubt have stumbled upon the conundrum of sex & sexes. Matt Ridley's most prominent work, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, covered...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 7:13 AM • 7 Comments •
Live tweeting ASHG 2009 permlink
Category: Genetics
Dr. Daniel MacArthur and Luke Jostins. Also see the #asgh2009 hash-tag....
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Posted by Razib Khan at 5:56 PM • 0 Comments •
The arc of evolutionary genetics may be irreversible permlink
Category: Evolution
One of the banes of modern life is the stack of papers in one's "to-read" list. I guess that goes to show how cushy modern life is, as what sort of complaint is that? In any case, I began to...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 9:33 AM • 4 Comments •
The arc of evolutionary genetics is long permlink
Category: Genetics
Evolutionary ideas have been around a long time, at least since the Greeks, and likely longer. I accept the arguments of researchers who suggest that humans are predisposed to Creationist thinking; after all, cross-cultural data shows the dominance of this...
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Posted by Razib Khan at 10:09 AM • 14 Comments •