The glue that gives spider webs their stickiness is a form of spider silk protein. Researchers can imagine cool uses for a synthetic version – but had to wait for the tricky glue gene to be sequenced.
The genome is becoming the unit of currency for all kinds of genetic testing.
from www.shutterstock.com
Do you own your own genetic data? The future of genomic databases is almost here, and now is the time to figure out how we are going to allow this information to be used.
The California two-spot octopus, Octopus bimaculoides, has distinctive blue ‘eye’ spots on either side of its head.
Roy Caldwell/UC Berkeley
While many of the fruits of the human genome project could be decades away, DNA sequencing of drug-resistant bacteria has been striding forwards
The discovery of the genes that influence the beak shape in the famous Galapagos finches highlight the underlying unity of all life.
Paul Krawczuk/Flickr
Darwin's finches are known to be a paragon of evolution by natural selection, but a recent genetic discovery relating to their beaks highlights the evolutionary connectedness of all life.
Genomics is increasingly hailed by many as the turning point in modern medicine. Advances in technology now mean we’re able to make out the full DNA sequence of an organism and decipher its entire hereditary…
An ambitious project has been launched that will involve sequencing genomes of 100,000 individuals to improve our understanding of a range of diseases and – hopefully – eventually find new treatments for…
Genetic testing is a powerful tool. Two years ago, with the help of my colleagues, it was this tool that helped us identify a new disease. The disease, called Ogden Syndrome, caused the death of a four-month…
Algal genes are introduced into tobacco cells that grow into plants.
Peggy Lemaux/UC Berkeley
Tobacco doesn’t immediately conjure up ideas of fuel for cars and planes. But that’s precisely what a three-year, $4.8m project from the US Department of Energy’s ARPA-E PETRO (Plants Engineered to Replace…
This Yellow Wagtail is a fugitive in flight, but forensic technology will track him down.
Flickr: jcoelho
The extinction of an animal is no longer the end of our opportunity to learn new things about its ecology and biology. The same technology that recently reconstructed the genome of the Neanderthal man…