Blog Archives

Richard Lewontin against the age

Posted on 21. November 2012
by

TranslationRichard Lewontin’s fame rests in part on his pioneering role in the development of the field of molecular evolution, and secondarily due to his trenchant Left-wing politics. Several readers have already pointed me to his rather strange review of two new works in The New York Review of Books. The prose strikes me as viscous and meandering, but some of the assertions are rather peculiar. For example: The other exception to random inheritance is not in the chromosomes, but in cellular particles called ribosomes that contain not DNA but a related molecule, RNA, which has heritable variation and is of …

>> weiterlesen… >> continue…

Leave a Reply ?

Gene Expression discusses: Are Jews white?

Posted on 22. Juli 2012
by
The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people

Translation  A little over two years ago I put up some posts on Jewish genetics due to the publication of some really exciting research. Looking at the referrals I noticed two trends which together were relatively bizarre. People would look at the same PCA plot and conclude that: Ashkenazi Jews are white Ashkenazi Jews are non-white First, some context. Most of these referrals were from websites with white nationalist or quasi-white nationalist sympathies. The non-Jews of this set tended toward the position that Jews were non-white, while the Jews felt that the genetic results vindicated the whiteness of Jews. In …

>> weiterlesen… >> continue…

Leave a Reply ?

The genetic map of Britain

Posted on 10. Juli 2012
by

TranslationWho are the British people? Where did they come from and how have they changed since the end of the ice age, when modern humans first came to the British Isles? How different are the people of Cornwall from those of Orkney or of East Anglia? Why are they different and what determines the differences? These are questions that can, to an amazing extent, be answered by studying the underlying genetic differences between the peoples of the British Isles. This genetic variation not only relates to the historical information we have about people’s movements but may also be important for …

>> weiterlesen… >> continue…

Leave a Reply ?

Mammut paarte sich auch artfremd

Posted on 26. Februar 2012
by

TranslationAnalyse mitochondrialer DNA entlarvt Hybride zweier Mammutarten Wollmammut-Weibchen waren offenbar nicht wählerisch: Sie paarten sich auch mit den um rund ein Viertel größeren Männchen einer anderen Art, dem Kolumbianischen Mammut. Dass diese Verbindung fruchtbar war, belegt jetzt der Vergleich der mitochondrialen DNA zweier Mammutrelikte: Sie entlarvt eines der beiden fossilen Mammuts als Hybride beider Arten. Diese jetzt im Fachjournal „Genome Biology” veröffentlichte Erkenntnis zeigt, dass die Mammutarten trotz einer Million Jahre getrennter Evolution noch genetisch verwandt genug waren, um sich kreuzen zu können. Quelle: scinexx

Leave a Reply ?