Tag: Human

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2011) UCLA scientists have created a mouse model for autism that opens a window into the biological mechanisms that underlie the disease and offers a promising way to test new treatment approaches.

Published in the Sept. 30 edition of Cell, the research found that autistic mice display remarkably similar symptoms and behavior as children and adults on the autism spectrum. The animals also responded well to an FDA-approved drug prescribed to autism patients to treat repetitive behaviors often associated with the disease.

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2011) Researchers from ETH Zurich have fitted human cells with a synthetic signaling cascade that can be used to switch on and regulate genes via blue light.
This "gene light switch" makes interesting therapies possible, which could be used to treat type 2 diabetes, for instance.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2010) Evolutionary divergence of humans from chimpanzees likely occurred some 8 million years ago rather than the 5 million year estimate widely accepted by scientists, a new statistical model suggests.

Working with mathematicians, anthropologists and molecular biologists, Martin has long sought to integrate evolutionary information derived from genetic material in various species with the fossil record to get a more complete picture.

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2010) The evolutionary mystery of menopause is a step closer to being solved thanks to research on killer whales.

A study by the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge has found a link between killer whales, pilot whales and humans -- the only three known species where females stop breeding relatively early in their lifespan.

ScienceDaily (July 4, 2010) Modern marsupials may be popular animals at the zoo and in children's books, but new findings by University at Buffalo biologists reveal that they harbor a "fossil" copy of a gene that codes for filoviruses, which cause Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers and are the most lethal viruses known to humans.

Published recently in the online journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, the paper demonstrates for the first time that mammals have harbored filoviruses for at least tens of millions of years, in contrast to the existing estimate of a few thousand.

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2010) A new analysis of the extinction of woolly mammoths and other large mammals more than 10,000 years ago suggests that they may have fallen victim to the same type of "trophic cascade" of ecosystem disruption that scientists say is being caused today by the global decline of predators such as wolves, cougars, and sharks.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2010) Human genomes from Southern African Bushmen and Bantu individuals have been sequenced by a team of scientists seeking a greater understanding of human genetic variation and its effect on human health.
The study's findings will be published in the journal Nature on 18 February 2010. The research was completed by scientists from American, African, and Australian research institutions, with support from Penn State University in the United States and from several U.S. companies that market DNA-sequencing instruments.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2010) Contrary to a widely held scientific theory that the mammalian Y chromosome is slowly decaying or stagnating, new evidence suggests that in fact the Y is actually evolving quite rapidly through continuous, wholesale renovation.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2010) About eight percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to researchers in Japan and the U.S.

The study, and an accompanying News & Views article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor Cיdric Feschotte, is published in the journal Nature.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2009) Why does a human baby need a full year before it can start walking, while a newborn foal gets up on its legs almost directly after birth?
Scientist have assumed that human motor development is unique because our brain is unusually complex and because it is particularly challenging to walk on two legs.
But now a research group at Lund University in Sweden has shown that human babies in fact start walking at the same stage in brain development as most other walking mammals, from small rodents to elephants.