Bonobo Cannibalism

An interesting though inconclusive article on findings of Bonobo cannibalism...

Sequencing the oldest modern human

Using a tuft of hair found in Greenland's permafrost, scientists have been able to sequence the entire genome and deduce some characteristics about the oldest modern man. A newspaper summary of the article can be found on the BBC website.

Founding Haplotypes

Analysis of mitochondial DNA in 30 Shuswap speaking Native Americans shows that a few had haplogroups rarely found in the Americas, as well as one (C4c) beleived to be a founding haplotype.

A quick look at why DNA analysis is essential to all hypotheses about the founding and peopling the New World.

you may be older than you think

you may be functionally older because of alleles that shorten your telomere length

Tracing the origins of rescued chimpanzees reveals widespread chimpanzee hunting in Cameroon

An analysis of mtDNA sequences and microsatellite loci in chimpanzees from the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon reveals the widespread presence of chimpanzee hunting within the country

Highly Punctuated Patterns of Population Structure on the X Chromosome and Implications for African Evolutionary History

87% of X-linked HapMap SNPs within the top 1% of FST values cluster into five distinct loci; analyses and resequencing data suggest that these five regions have been substrates of recent and strong adaptive evolution. Evolutionary implications are discussed.

An explicit signature of balancing selection for color-vision variation in new world monkeys

Using fecal DNA, the authors were able to sequence the L-M (red-green) opsin gene in wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and capuchins (Cebus capucinus). They found that these populations showed greater polymorphism in this gene than other DNA reference points, providing evidence that balancing selection is acting on color vision in New World primates.