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The blood in Irish veins is Celtic, right? Well, not exactly. Although the history many Irish people were taught at school is the history of the Irish as a Celtic race, the truth is much more complicated, and much more interesting than that ... Research done into the DNA of Irish males has shown that the old Anthropological attempts to define 'Irish' have been misguided. As late as the 1950s researchers were busy collecting data among Irish people such as hair colour and height, in order to categorise them as a 'race' and define them as different to the British....

In a prehistoric version of "the chicken or the egg" question, researchers have long debated which animal group came first. A traditional view pegs sponges—marine creatures that look more like rocks or corals—as our ancient ancestors. But a new genetic study is stirring the waters, suggesting comb jellies, gelatinous marine animals that look similar to jellyfish, are actually the first animals to have evolved over 600 million years ago.

A shocking case of a family of ~40 in rural Australia, the “Colts” (it’s a pseudonym), which has engaged in several generations of first degree incest has surfaced. You can read the summary in the press. But the Australian government has released a report on the case. I haven’t read most of it because the snippets I have stumbled upon are very disturbing. But, I was curious as to the characterization of the 12 children who were removed by social services. In particular, only one, Cindy, had parents who were unrelated. Note how different she is: Cindy Colt (5), Rhonda...

Scientists have discovered a second code hiding within DNA. This second code contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease. UW scientists were stunned to discover that genomes use the genetic code to write two separate languages. One describes how proteins are made, and the other instructs the cell on how genes are controlled. One language is written on top of the other, which is why the second language remained hidden for so long. The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team...

The common perception of purebred dogs is that they are more striking, beautiful animals than they would be without human intervention. However, that notion has been thrown to the dogs. Strong photographic evidence has emerged that shows how 100 years of breeding has actually warped the good looks of the original hounds.

The Food and Drug Administration has ordered Google-backed genetic test maker 23andMe to halt sales of its personalized DNA test kits, saying the company has failed to show that the technology is supported by science.

The $126 million genetic-testing company can tell you how to live smarter, better, and longer. It can also tell you what might kill you. You can purchase 14 gallons of organic milk or 396 lollipops. You can give her 33 rides on the Ferris wheel at the state fair, or you can get him a couple of violin lessons. You could put the money in a savings account, you could buy her her very own LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer digital learning tablet, or you could buy enough pizzas to feed all of her friends on the block. So many options, so...

SANTA FE—Where did the first Americans come from? Most researchers agree that Paleoamericans moved across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia sometime before 15,000 years ago, suggesting roots in East Asia. But just where the source populations arose has long been a mystery. Now comes a surprising twist, from the complete nuclear genome of a Siberian boy who died 24,000 years ago—the oldest complete genome of a modern human sequenced to date. His DNA shows close ties to those of today's Native Americans. Yet he apparently descended not from East Asians, but from people who had lived in Europe or...

A dental study of 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 hominin species shows that no known species matches the expected profile of the last common ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis and anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides evidence that the lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans diverged about 1 million years ago – much earlier than previous studies have suggested.“Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans. These discrepancies cannot be simply...

Every cell in your body has a little clock ticking away in it. Your heart may be “younger.” Tumors are the "oldest." Embryonic stem cells, the body’s master cells, look just like newborns with a biological age of zero.

In genetics, it’s not just the living who advance the field: DNA preserved in the brittle bones of our ancestors can provide significant insight into our genetic history. Such is the case with a new genetic history of Europe, traced by an international team of researchers and published today in Science. By creating a seamless genetic map from 7,500 to 3,500 years ago in one geographic region, scientists discovered that the genetic diversity of modern day Europe can’t be explained by a single migration, as previously thought, but by multiple migrations coming from a range of areas in modern day...

The majority of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from prehistoric European women, according to study published today (October 8) in Nature Communications. While the Jewish religion began in the Near East, and the Ashkenazi Jews were believed to have origins in the early indigenous tribes of this region, new evidence from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on exclusively from mother to child, suggests that female ancestors of most modern Ashkenazi Jews converted to Judaism in the north Mediterranean around 2,000 years ago and later in west and central Europe.

A transgender man is the first in Europe to give birth to a baby after becoming pregnant through a sperm donor. The unidentified man, who was born a woman, delivered the baby boy at home with a midwife in the poor Neukoellin district of Berlin. He insisted on a home birth because he refused to be listed as the mother on any hospital documents - a legal requirement of in Germany. The case in Germany mirrors that of Thomas Beatie in the US, pictured, who has given birth to three children and was the first man to ever give birth...

The scientists examined the DNA of mitochondria, tiny power plants within cells that get passed down from mother to child. Scientists use mitochondrial DNA from living populations to decipher ancient movements of their ancestors. Most studies have examined only a small part of the mitochondria's circular piece of DNA. But Antonio Torroni, a geneticist at the University of Pavia in Italy, and his coauthors compiled complete mitochondrial genomes from 41 native North Americans and combined that data with information from previous studies... supports the widely accepted notion of an initial coastal migration wave. A second wave of migration probably left...

WASHINGTON — It has been a decade since the human genome was first sequenced and the 3.2 billion rungs of our DNA ladder laid out for analysis. That achievement — mapping the fundamental biological code that defines our species and characterizes us as individuals — may have implications as important as the splitting of the atom or the discovery of the wheel. We can already envision custom-designed medicines as well as custom-designed fetuses. There are ethical questions to be asked and scientific questions to be answered. And nothing about the subject is simple. But credit “Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code,” an...

The same protein tells beta cells in the pancreas to stop making insulin and then to self-destruct as diabetes worsens, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study published online today in the journal Nature Medicine. Specifically, the research revealed that a protein called TXNIP controls the ability of beta cells to make insulin, the hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels. "We spent years confirming that TXNIP drives beta-cell death in both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes," said Anath Shalev, M.D., director of the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center and senior author of the paper. "We were astounded to...

I have seen this running today on FOX and I think it's creepy. So you get a 'testing kit' and send it off to a lab??? To find out about myself?

The Book of Genesis puts Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden, but geneticists’ version of the duo — the ancestors to whom the Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA of today’s humans can be traced — were thought to have lived tens of thousands of years apart. Now, two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all. When the overall population size does not change (as is likely to have happened for long periods of human history), men have, on average, just one...

FULL TITLE: Autism breakthrough as 'genetic signature' in babies as young as a year found; blood test in the works A GENETIC "signature" of autism in babies as young as 12 months has been identified for the first time, an international conference is to be told. A simple blood test is now being developed and may be available in one to two years, Professor Eric Courchesne will tell the Asia Pacific Autism conference in Adelaide today. "This discovery really changes the landscape of our understanding of causes and effective treatments," says the director of the Autism Centre of Excellence at...

"From previous studies, it is estimated that 40% to 70% of a person's BMI is inherited," Batterham says, but it's complex and not as simple as just giving a percent. Overall, the role of any single gene [in obesity] is not big, Qi says. However, if all the obesity-related genes are considered, “the effect would be sizable."