Schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and autism have all had recent attention for being “genetically caused”. In scientific research being genetically caused usually corresponds to having a high…
Bella Counihan, The Conversation and Olivia Clarke, The Conversation
New research claims genetics play an important role in the exam results of British teenagers, even more important than their home life or their teachers. The research, conducted by academics in the United…
Every now and again you might read about gene therapy and efforts to correct serious genetic diseases. But I’m betting that very few readers have had gene therapy, nor have they ever met anyone who has…
Men who are unemployed for more than two years show signs of faster ageing in their DNA, according to a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers at the University of Oulu, Finland and…
We all know the story: Once upon a time there was a young girl who took a walk through the woods to visit her grandmother, carrying a basket of goodies. When she arrived she found her granny ill in bed…
Talent is unfair. One can quibble about what it actually is. But there is little doubt that it is something that emerges not just from the genes but also from their interaction with the environment. Different…
You might think you don’t have much in common with a fruit fly. But studying them could tell us more about human conditions such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) - from, for example, a motorbike accident…
If your great-grandparents lived through a famine, their experience could well have altered their genetic code. And three generations later you could well be showing signs of that change. The idea that…
Adrian Bird, Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin were hotly tipped to win this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine for their pioneering work in the field of epigenetics. They didn’t win. But their nomination is…
Ashwellthorpe Lower Wood in Norfolk, England has been managed by coppicing, an ancient form of forestry, for more than a thousand years. It was recorded as coppiced woodland in the Domesday Book published…
Imagine a lake so salty its water exists in a liquid state at -20 °C – then picture something thriving in that seemingly lethal environment. Such an organism exists; several of them, in fact. In a paper…
You get hauled out of bed in the morning not just because of an alarm clock. We are genetically encoded with a 24-hour (circadian) body clock that allows us to live in harmony with our environment. But…
Sex in mammals, including mouse and human, is determined genetically and depends on the paternal sex chromosome - X or Y - received at the time of fertilisation. If nothing goes wrong, an XX individual…
Contaminated during the surrounding area’s history of mining, the River Hayle in Cornwall contains metals including copper, zinc, nickel and cadmium at levels that can kill brown trout, a particularly…
The display of a frozen mammoth in Japan has again raised questions as to the possibility of creating a live born clone of extinct animals. Theoretically, mammoths could be cloned by recovering, reconstructing…
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford