Manish sent me this story about the rise and fall (at least in substance) of Gawker. Long time readers will note that Liz Spiers, one of the original contributors to GNXP, looms large. Labels: Blog

Sign Up, Subscribe to the Feed and Learn More! We’ve got 30 people signed up so far. I know more will come on board, so I’m looking forward to getting drowned in pure science in ~3 weeks. Also, if you have a science themed blog post the link in the comments. Thinking about refurbishing the […]

Following on the heels of HMGA2, another genome-wide scan for genes involved in height identfies a region near GDF5 and UQCC: Identifying genetic variants that influence human height will advance our understanding of skeletal growth and development. Several rare genetic variants have been convincingly and reproducibly associated with height in mendelian syndromes, and common variants […]

Just noticed that Nature’s Oracle: A Life of W. D. Hamilton is finally out. I haven’t read it yet, but will have soon once my copy arrives. If you don’t know who W. D. Hamilton is, you know his work. Hamilton’s early theoretical papers on the evolution of sociality (e.g., kin selection) were the root […]

Steve Sailer has the goods on Francis Crick via his private correspondence. To be short about it Crick seemed to be of the same general opinion as James Watson regarding issues such as race & intelligence; in fact, his survey of the literature & acquaintance with the principals was clearly more thorough. Is anyone particularly […]

I’ve recently pointed out a number of advances in dog genetics, in particular with regards to behavioral phenotypes. A just-published review lays out what the future has in store; these are exciting times. In particular, people familiar with Belyaev and his silver foxes will be particularly interested in this part: Recently, a fox meiotic linkage […]

Just a follow up on the post where many of the comments examined the utility of social science. I happened to walk by my copy of Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases today. Anyone who thinks that social science doesn’t uncover “surprising” findings should check out this research program; it isn’t a coincidence that Daniel […]

Culture Influences Brain Function, Study Shows: To find out, a team led by John Gabrieli, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, asked 10 East Asians recently arrived in the United States and 10 Americans to make quick perceptual judgments while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner–a technology that […]

Via Dienekes, Eye Color, Hair Color, Blood Type, and the Rhesus Factor: Exploring Possible Genetic Links to Sexual Orientation: The present study sought to expand the limited evidence that sexual orientation is influenced by genetic factors. This was accomplished by seeking statistical differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals for four traits that are known to be […]

Andrew Gelman weighs in on whether or not social scientists “know things”, in response to Robin Hanson’s statement that indeed they do. I have no real comment, except to say that I’m moderately pleased to see that he classifies biology as a field that gets shit done.

An Actn3 knockout mouse provides mechanistic insights into the association between α-actinin-3 deficiency and human athletic performance: A common nonsense polymorphism (R577X) in the ACTN3 gene results in complete deficiency of the fast skeletal muscle fiber protein α-actinin-3 in an estimated one billion humans worldwide. The XX null genotype is under-represented in elite sprint athletes, […]

A simple, elegant paper published in Science maps a certain type of dwarfism to the PCNT gene: Using genetic linkage analysis, we find that biallelic loss-of-function mutations in the centrosomal pericentrin (PCNT) gene on chromosome 21q22.3 cause microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II (MOPD II) in 25 patients. Adults with this rare inherited condition have […]

A review in the latest Medical Hypotheses discusses the evolutionary basis of Huntington’s disease, a rare dominant genetic disorder affecting around 3-7 per 100,000 people of European origin. Individuals carrying a single mutant copy of the huntingtin gene (HD+) typically suffer serious neurological and physical problems beginning between age 35 and 50, and killing them […]

In the comments on a previous post, I made reference to a paper by Demuth et al. on the evolution of gene families in mammals. As this was published in PLoS One, I took a look at the annotations. One of the comments by Laurent Duret brings up a potentially major issue–the authors use a […]

Evidence for declines in human population densities during the early Upper Paleolithic in western Europe: In western Europe, the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (M/UP) transition, dated between ~35,000 and ~40,000 radiocarbon years, corresponded to a period of major human biological and cultural changes…New faunal data from the high-resolution record of Saint-Cesaire, France, indicate an episode […]

So I read that Andrew Olmstead has died. I didn’t read his blog and only vaguely knew of the name, though Gene Expression is on his blog roll.* 5 years ago when I started blogging it was a relatively new medium; people shouted at each other with disembodied voices. But slowly blogging and real life […]

There’s been some talk about the dynamics of genome architecture on the comments, so I thought I’d point to Mike Lynch’s The origins of eukaryotic gene structure (Open Access). The paper is a reduction of the major themes presented in the book of the similar name. This is of course only Lynch’s view; but by […]

Provisional paper in PLOS Genetics, Comparing Patterns of Natural Selection Across Species Using Selective Signatures. Haven’t had a chance to read it closely, but bet you if they had specified their species in the title they would have gotten fewer first looks. Flies might not be that sexy, but by definition they are sexier than […]

Now, I’m no expert on Drosophila sex, but this paper caught my eye: Mating in many species induces a dramatic switch in female reproductive behaviour. In most insects, this switch is triggered by factors present in the male’s seminal fluid. How these factors exert such profound effects in females is unknown. Here we identify a […]

Evidence of still-ongoing convergence evolution of the lactase persistence T-13910 alleles in humans makes the case for a common Eurasian group of lactase persistence alleles across Eurasia, and among some African populations, derived from one mutational event within the last 10,000 years. A novel polymorphism associated with lactose tolerance in Africa: multiple causes for lactase […]