Word: dna
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...else entirely if it winds up on your dinner plate. To date, there's nothing to suggest that re-engineered plants have ever done anyone any harm. Nonetheless, the European Union has blocked the importation of some GM crops, and since 1997 has required that foods that contain engineered DNA be labeled as such. Plenty of trade watchers in Washington see the European actions as one more tweak from an increasingly powerful E.U. no longer intimidated by U.S. economic might. While that may be, the fact remains that the U.S. Congress may address a labeling bill of its own this...
...Prosecutors want to use DNA samples from Marilyn Sheppard to prove they were right all along ? that Dr. Sam Sheppard was the killer, not the bushy-haired intruder Sheppard claimed knocked him unconscious when he came to the aid of his screaming wife. (Sheppard died in 1970; his remains were exhumed for DNA samples in 1997 at his son's request.) But Sheppard?s son claims that the intruder was a very real window-washer, and calls the exhumation just another stall tactic by the prosecution. When poor Mrs. Sheppard is unearthed ? no date has yet been set ? what clues...
BRING HOME THE BACON Given the serious shortage of human organs available for transplant, scientists have been hoping that parts harvested from pigs might suffice. One concern, however, has been whether a virus called Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus, which hides in pig DNA, could be transmitted to humans. Now comes reassuring news. In a study of 160 folks treated with live pig cells, not one became infected with the virus. Don't expect pig replacement parts anytime soon, though. Animal-to-human organ transplants are still years away...
...recently as five years ago, all that scientists could really tell about our earliest ancestors was when they first appeared. Molecular biologists had measured the differences between human and chimpanzee DNA, then averaged the rate of genetic change over time. By calculating backward, they determined that great apes and hominids branched from a common ancestor between 6 million and 4 million years ago. But no fossils were on hand to support this scenario. The oldest hominid species known, Australopithecus afarensis (southern ape of the Afar), could be dated back only 3.6 million years. Its most famous member, Lucy, unearthed...
...romantic notion of how the Neanderthals disappeared has been around for decades: perhaps they were eliminated by interbreeding with us. Maybe we all carry a bit of Neanderthal in our DNA. Two years ago, molecular biologists tested that hypothesis by extracting some DNA from a Neanderthal fossil and comparing it with that of modern humans. Their conclusion: the differences are great enough to rule out significant interbreeding, even though such mating would have been biologically possible...