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'A common misconception is the things that come from Neanderthals are generally bad,' Prüfer says, 'but that’s not entirely true.'   

New Clues How Neanderthal Genes Affect Your Health

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Speaking of the fossil record, what about the linguistic fossil record? The word Neanderthal is a compound German word: Neander + thal. "Neander" is the name of a river in Germany and "thal" means valley. But not any more. Modern German dropped the "th" spelling (and the "th" sound) [ed.: nice alliteration].

Neandertal is the modern German word. There's even a bit of linguistic residue in English: Tal is cognate with "dale" as in hill and dale.

Homo sapiens' sex with extinct species was no one-night stand

Our species, Homo sapiens, has a more adventurous sexual history than previously realized, and all that bed-hopping long ago has left an indelible mark on the human genome.

Scientists said on Friday an analysis of genetic information on about 1,500 people from locations around the world indicated at least four interbreeding episodes tens of thousands of years ago, three with our close cousins the Neanderthals and one with the mysterious extinct human species known as Denisovans.

People living on the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia represented the only population found to possess an appreciable level of Denisovan genetic ancestry. These Melanesians, like most human populations, also had Neanderthal genetic ancestry.

http://news.yahoo.com/homo-sapiens-sex-extinct-species-no-one-night-012711275.html;_ylt=AwrC1CjvTO1W0yUAth_QtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBydWNmY2MwBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwM0BHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

"Until you’ve had ‘thal, you haven’t had it at all"

Sex with Neanderthals May Explain Modern Allergies.

You may have to pump yourself full of Zyrtec just to step outside during allergy season because your ancestors couldn’t keep their hands off those sexy Neanderthals, suggests two new studies in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Neanderthals and a second now-extinct hominid—Denisovans—were living in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years before humans arrived and were likely well-adapted to the local pathogens, according to a press release. When humans showed up and started interbreeding, they took on some of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genes. One of the studies reports three genes having to do with ‘innate immunity’ in modern humans show more similarities to Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes than the rest.

Innate immunity is the body's first response to pathogens and other foreign substances, NPR reports. The three genes from Neanderthals and Denisovans "are key components of innate immunity and provide an important first line of immune defense against bacteria, fungi, and parasites," according to the second study. But there's a "trade-off," as researcher Janet Kelso puts it. "I suppose that some of us can blame Neanderthals for our susceptibility to common allergies, like hay fever," she tells NPR. That's because these genes that helped ancient humans ward off disease in a new world can cause the body to overreact to minor foreign substances, such as pollen, according to the press release.

Via Instapundit

"Intelligence genes discovered by scientists"

The Telegraph: They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.

However when the genes are mutated or in the wrong order, it can lead to dullness of thinking, or even serious cognitive impairments.

Scientists believe that there must be a ‘master switch’ regulating the networks and if they could find it, they could ‘switch on’ intelligence for everyone.

“We know that genetics plays a major role in intelligence but until now haven’t known which genes are relevant,” said Dr Michael Johnson, lead author of the study from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College.

“This research highlights some of genes involved in human intelligence, and how they interact with each other.

“What’s exciting about this is that the genes we have found are likely to share a common regulation, which means that potentially we can manipulate a whole set of genes whose activity is linked to human intelligence.

“Our research suggests that it might be possible to work with these genes to modify intelligence, but that is only a theoretical possibility at the moment – we have just taken a first step along that road.”

"Frogs Surprisingly Like Humans, Genetically Speaking"

Livescience: African clawed frogs have more in common with humans than you might think, according to their newly sequenced genome, which shows a surprising number of commonalities with the human genome.

The frog in question is a slimy, rotund type scientifically named Xenopus tropicalis. This is the first time an amphibian genome has been sequenced, and scientists say it represents a big hop forward in understanding not just frogs but Earth's whole tree of life.

In fact, many of Earth's creatures are more similar to each other, genetically speaking, than you might guess just by looking at them...

The frogs' similarity to humans has come in handy before.

In the early 20th century biologists discovered that these frogs were unusually sensitive to human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone produced by pregnant women. The frogs gained popularity as a low-cost pregnancy test in the 1940s and 1950s. Doctors would inject a frog with a woman's urine, and if she was pregnant, the frog would ovulate and produce eggs in 8 to 10 hours.

"To Stop Climate Change, We Must Genetically Engineer Humans"

"A lot of researchers are thinking about how to genetically engineer crops and food animals to help them withstand post-climate change heat and parched conditions. But what about genetically engineering humans to slow our constant carbon contributions?"

The first proposal we cover is night vision — the idea that we could genetically engineer humans to have more rods so we could better see at night, and thus reduce our dependence on electric lights. The problem here is that there are only so many spots for rods and cones in our eyeballs, and our particular balance of the two is a tradeoff. Humans are day creatures, so they have more cone cells. Animals like cats are night creatures, so they have more rods. So during the day, humans can actually see motion about 10 to 12 times better than a cat. And many experts think that cats don’t see the same number of colors we do, although they’re divided over whether cats see in mostly blues and grays, or whether they see more like dogs where everything is less saturated. So if we want night vision, we might have to compromise some of our day vision to get it.

Another modification that Liao proposed was an induced allergy to meat, to help people reduce their consumption of animals. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States 14.5% of all greenhouse gas pollution comes from livestock. So the idea here is to make people allergic to eating meat. The problem is that there’s no real way to control the severity of the allergy, and the two proteins that Liao talks about targeting (BSA and alpha-gal) are both found in all kinds of places like milk, eggs, dogs, cats and pork. People allergic to alpha-gal seem to be able to eat poultry and fish, but if they were to eat pork or lamb or beef the allergic reaction includes everything from hives to gastrointestinal upset, to anaphylactic shock. Not something most people would want to sign up for.

Next we talk about breeding people to be shorter, something Liao says could reduce our carbon footprint. Smaller people require less energy and use fewer resources, Liao argues. But selecting for height genetically would be a nightmare, according to the most recent paper that Maxmen found there are 697 genes involved in height. Since there’s not a good way to select for height genetically, another method Liao talks about in his paper is using treatments that cause babies to be born light — to have a low “birth weight.” But that comes with a set of very real dangers to the baby, and few mothers would opt to take that risk. Not to mention set their kid up for society’s bias against people (particularly men) who are shorter.

Via Rush Limbaugh radio show

"Researchers Find Genes That Can Make You Look Younger By 10 Years"

Could the genetic advantage be called black privilege?

The researchers discovered that the younger gene is present in around 10 percent of white Americans and 20 percent of black Americans. The team believes that this gene has helped make these individuals look 10 years younger than they actually were.

These findings could help explain how celebrities, such as Hollywood actress Halle Berry, 48, and supermodel Iman, 59, could retain their youthful looks.

"Many of us felt that people with darker skin aged better because of more pigment and better photo [sunlight] protection, but we have found there is much more to it than that," Kimball said.

"They have other characteristics in their skin which confer good ageing, which until now we had no idea about."

io9: "The Radical Plan To Phase Out Earth's Predatory Species"

"Should animals be permitted to hunt and kill other animals? Some futurists believe that humans should intervene, and solve the "problem" of predator vs. prey once and for all. We talked to the man who wants to use radical ecoengineering to put an end to the carnage."

A world without predators certainly sounds extreme, and it is. But British philosopher David Pearce can't imagine a future in which animals continue to be trapped in the never-ending cycle of blind Darwinian processes. It's up to us, he argues, to put our brains, our technologies, and our sense of compassion to good use, and do something about it. It's part of his overarching Hedonistic Imperative, a far-sighted "abolitionist project" set with the goal of achieving nothing less than the elimination of all suffering on the planet. And by all suffering, he means all suffering. (read more)

I thought this was an Onion parody type of article, but, as I read on I came around to the conclusion that it is not a parody. This guy means business.

What do you think? Is this a good idea, or, Is this guy off his rocker?

Founder Effect among the Amish

"The Amish make up only about 10 percent of the population in Geagua County in Ohio, but they're half of the special needs cases. Three of the five Miller children, for example, have a mysterious crippling disease that has no name and no known cure.

...The three Byler sisters were all born with a condition that has no cure and mysteriously leads to severe mental retardation and a host of physical problems. Last year, doctors figured out the girls have the gene for something called Cohen Syndrome; there are only 100 known cases worldwide. 

..."Nobody knew it was around here and we found, what, 20 to 30 cases in this area now that they didn't realize. Nobody knew about it," says Erwin Kuhns.

...The genetic problems come down to something called the "founder effect" because the nearly 150,000 Amish in America can trace their roots back to a few hundred German-Swiss settlers who brought the Amish and Mennonite faiths to the United States in the 18th century. Over generations of intermarriage, rare genetic flaws have shown up, flaws which most of us carry within our genetic makeup but which don't show up unless we marry someone else with the same rare genetic markers.

...While 60 Minutes Wednesday was in Ohio, Dr. Wang [a pediatrician hired by the community] made a house call to check on the Miller children. Bobby Junior, the sickest, can't tell Wang what's bothering him because he can't even talk.

And the doctor was treating these challenging cases under the most rudimentary conditions since Amish custom prohibits electricity. Still, he doesn't complain. In fact, he calls the heritage beautiful and says, "We are not come here to change them."

..."I knew as soon as I had the third one, I knew," [the mother of the Byler sisters] says. "They kept telling me, 'No, she's OK.' No, she wasn't. I could hear by her cry that she was gonna be like the others. Their cry is different. You can tell. After you've lived with it that long, you know."

Now, when she needs to go to the doctor, she wheels the girls into her van. She's left buggy rides, and the whole Amish lifestyle, behind. But the price was being shunned forever by the community, as well as her ex-husband and her two healthy adult children.

Irma's now tuned in to the 20th century, and Iva's plugged into the 21st. Using a genealogy Web site, she's figured out she and her ex-husband were distantly related, something that appears to be common among the Amish.

"I don't think the Amish really understand that it's a genetic disorder that causes the handicapping condition," Byler says.

The Amish think it is God's will; "Gottes Wille" is how they describe it."

-CBS News

"The Genetic Atlas Shows You Where You Came From"

"Humans have a long and super complicated history: Someone became a human in Africa and then started walking, some of us mixed with Neanderthals, others didn’t, some of us hopped across that land bridge in Russia, others headed for Europe instead. A new map helps us make sense of it all and can help tell you where you came from."

The genetic atlas was put together by researchers at Oxford University and University College London and covers 4,000 years of human migration and mating histories for 95 different populations in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America.

To assemble it, researchers analyzed the DNA of nearly 1,500 people and traced them back to their origins. The DNA was then compared with each other for similarities.

The results give us a glimpse into human history. The map will tell you, for example, that the average Irish person is 9 percent Greek, 4 percent Italian, 45 percent Scottish, and 26 percent Norwegian. An accompanying research paper about the map’s inception was published in Science.

Much of the map aligns with previous theories about human migration, but researchers say there were some surprises.

“Because our approach uses only genetic data, it provides information independent from other sources … We see evidence of previously unrecorded genetic mixing,” Simon Myers of Oxford University said.

The map tells all sorts of genetic stories, from the Arab slave trade of the 7th century to the influence of China’s Silk Road and the migration of the Spanish conquest. It's definitely worth poking around a bit.

Motherboard

A Pro-Choice China

"Imagine what a couple might pay to ensure that they get the best out of 10 or 50 possible offspring, optimizing over their choice of heritable attributes,” he [Bowen Zhao], wrote on his blog, comparing the cost of a Harvard degree or private school with the few thousand dollars it takes to fertilize and implant embryos."

Bowen Zhao is the head of Shenzhen-based CG B.G.I,, formerly called Beijing Genomics Institute, the world’s largest genetic-research center, currently mapping the genes of math geniuses.

'There are going to be countries that say this is part of our national health-care service and everyone is doing it,” he told the New Yorker. “And eventually it would become unstoppable, because the countries that initially outlawed it would have to come around. How could they not?”

On the bright side, always looking for positive signs from our trade partner, this could mean China is not happy with Dennis Rodman's pal, North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Wild guess.

Chinese firm hunting for the 'maths gene' than could one day allow parents to pick their smartest embryos