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[H/T Numberonepal] Dnice4Jesus @DeniceMarin wrote:I emailed the CDC to ask them how they are verifying what variant is dominant. This was their answer. Thoughts?https://twitter.com/DeniceMarin/status/1420967836613238784

The precision medicine initiative proposed by President Barack Obama last week would center on a huge new biobank containing medical records and genetic information for perhaps a million Americans. It would not be created from scratch by enrolling new volunteers, however, but would instead pull together existing studies into one giant database. That’s according to several scientists familiar with the broad outlines of the project who spoke on background with ScienceInsider. The biobank would be used for studies ranging from finding new disease-gene associations to working out how to use genomic and other molecular information in routine medical care. On...

DNA sequencing of 36 complete Y chromosomes has uncovered a previously unknown population explosion that occurred 40 to 50 thousand years ago, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60 to 70 thousand years ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10 thousand years ago. This is the first time researchers have used the information from large-scale DNA sequencing to create an accurate family tree of the Y chromosome, from which the inferences about human population history could be made. "We have always considered the expansion of humans out of...

Genetic Expression: Same Genes Can Produce Different Results by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Genes could be thought of as brick molds, used to construct materials for building the physical structures of living organisms. They carry the codes to help make proteins, which then make up different cells that are combined together to form mega-structures called tissues. New research has shed more light on how genes are used by cells to build the different tissues needed by complex living creatures. Genes—which make up a very small fraction of DNA—were thought to be the central genetic features that drive cell function and embryonic...

Washington, DC (AHN) - In what could be the largest medical prize in history, the X-Prize Foundation says $10 million is up for grabs to the first private team that decodes 100 human genomes in 10 days. The organizers believe rapid genetic sequencing is the next great frontier, and could pave the way for a new era of personalized medicine. It could allow doctors to measure patients' vulnerability to illness and genetic connections to diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. This is the second major challenge from the foundation, which also sponsored the $10 million prize to the team who developed...

Scientists have pieced together part of the genetic recipe of the extinct woolly mammoth. The 5,000 DNA letters spell out the genetic code of its mitochondria, the structures in the cell that generate energy. The research, published in the online edition of Nature, gives an insight into the elephant family tree. It shows that the mammoth was most closely related to the Asian rather than the African elephant. The three groups split from a common ancestor about six million years ago, with Asian elephants and mammoths diverging about half a million years later. "We have finally resolved the phylogeny of...

Scientists have extracted and decoded the DNA of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago. They plan to unravel the DNA of other extinct species, including our closest ancient relatives, the Neanderthals. But they say the idea of obtaining DNA from dinosaurs, depicted in the film Jurassic Park, remains science fiction. It is highly unlikely that viable genetic material will ever be recovered from fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old. But the scientists hope to be able to sequence the DNA of ancient humans, which lived at the same time as cave bears, raising the prospect...

Neanderthal DNA Sequencing In July of 1997 the first ever sequencing of Neanderthal DNA was announced in the Jouranl Cell (Krings, et. al., 1997), a breakthrough in the study of modern human evolution. The DNA was extracted for the type specimen and the mitochondrial DNA sequence was determined. This sequence was compared to living human mtDNA sequences and found to be outside the range of variation in modern humans. Age estimation of the Neanderthal and human divergence is four times older than the age of the common mtDNA ancestor of all living humans. The authors suggest that the Neanderthals...