genetics

Animals

Signature Song keeps Fairy-Wren Moms from Being Fooled

Talk about "singing for your supper": New research shows that fairy-wren chicks have to sing a specific song to their mother or she will refuse to feed them.... READ ON

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"The Botany of Desire" Documentary, TONIGHT at 8pm on PBS

Update: the entire documentary is now available online for free! A new PBS* documentary, The Botany of Desire, premieres Wednesday night (tonight!) at 8pm on PBS stations throughout the US. It's based on the popular Michael Pollan book of the same name, and I urge you to carve out two hours (in most markets between 8pm - 10pm) on Wednesday night to watch it. The program is packed with science, history, and beautiful photography. I've seen the film in advance, and I highly recommend it,... READ ON

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What Happened to the Honeybees

Today, Scientific American brings us some answers to the question what happened to the honeybees? Since the "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) appeared in 2006, millions of beehives have been abandoned by the bees, putting bee-pollinated crops at risk -- and in turn threatening the livelihood of farmers and apiarists (beekeepers). In the SA article Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees, researchers Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp detail their efforts to solve the mystery, through contact with... READ ON

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Seed: Fun With Flowers

Seed is a simple, open-ended game in which you plant virtual flowers, cross-breed them, and create new varieties. Here's a screenshot after a minute or two of... READ ON

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Geep: Behold the Sheep-Goat Chimera

Let's say you've got a sheep and a goat (and a bioengineering lab) and want to have a little fun. Why not make a geep? Geeps are created in the lab by effectively mashing up fertilized embryos from sheep and goats, then implanting the result into sheep or goat mothers. The resulting animal isn't a hybrid, it's a chimera: an animal with two genetically distinct sets of cells inside it. Thus a geep looks like a sort of frankenpet, with patches of its body exhibiting furry goatlike features and others... READ ON

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Sign up to find the luminaries lurking in your past

A NYtimes article published today discusses DNA testing as a "family history research tool." Among the famous whose DNA has been tested is Marie Antoinette, who belonged to maternal Haplogroup H (along with about half of all Europeans). Katie Couric (maternal Haplogroup K) is genetically linked to a 5,000-year-old iceman whose body was recently discovered in the Alps. And Jesse James? T2, a subgroup of maternal Haplogroup T. Whether you've mapped your family's taproots or would rather... READ ON

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Are You Color Blind?

Last week's Tone Deafness Test was popular, so this week let's talk Color Blindness. I am "Color Blind," though I prefer to say I'm "Color Confused," as I do see colors -- just not, uh, the right ones. I have a condition called Deuteranomaly. Here's an explanation of the condition from colorvisiontesting.com (warning: some "misused" quotation marks are retained): Deuteranomaly (five out of 100 males): The deuteranomalous person is considered "green weak". Similar to the protanomalous person, he is... READ ON

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Roller Pigeons

Last week I discussed Homing Pigeons; now it's time for an introduction to the strange world of Roller Pigeons. These birds (also known as Birmingham Rollers) are bred for a genetic defect which causes brief seizures during flight -- causing the birds to roll in mid-air. Breeders hold competitions in which they attempt to synchronize the birds' seizures, measuring the length and quality of the resulting aerial acrobatics. Generally the birds recover before hitting the ground. If that's not odd... READ ON

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Seeds in Space

After picking up a new African Violet at the grocery store, I noticed a little tag on the plant -- the tag had a picture of the Space Shuttle, surrounded by flowers. Eh? A quick trip to Google, and I learned all about the Optimara EverFloris "Space Violet" program. From the site: ...the development of EverFloris Violets began in 1984, when Optimara launched 25,000 Optimara seeds into space aboard one of NASA's space shuttles. The seeds remained in space, orbiting the Earth, for nearly six years. (The... READ ON

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New Species of Leopard Identified

...And it was right under our noses all this time. "For over a hundred years we have been looking at this animal and never realized it was unique," said Adam Tomasek, head of WWF's Borneo and Sumatra program. The "Bornean clouded leopard" has a distinct DNA profile from a related mainland species, prompting scientists to declare it a separate species. You can read more about the new Borneon clouded leopard at ScienceDaily. Wikipedia has more info on the various clouded leopard species, including some... READ ON