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Blood type should be something you pay attention to when you’re searching for a sperm donor if: 1) You want your child’s blood type to match your own or your partner’s 2) You’re Rh negative, meaning you have a blood … Continue reading
Neanderthal Silhouette (Photo credit: eri~ DNA sequencing is an extremely important tool in the fields of Genetics and Molecular Biology.
~ The Human Genome sequence was finished in 2001. That is 3,000,000,000 bits of information were decoded and put in order – a BIG job.
~ Now, using 38,000-year-old bone fragments, researchers have sequenced 3.7 billion base pairs of Neanderthal DNA.
~ Neanderthals are our closest relatives on the hominid family tree. We split from them about 500,000 years ago and for the next 475,000 years or so, modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted on the planet and sometimes even in the same region.
~ Neanderthals vanished about 30,000 years ago, leaving modern humans to inherit the Earth. Why humans ended up being more successful has long been a topic of debate.
~ Interestingly, the newly completed sequence shows that humans and Neanderthals have genomes that are 99.5 percent the same.
~ By comparing the human and Neanderthal genomes with that of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, researchers hope to tell which genes changed very recently, giving modern humans an edge.
Scientists use 3 key features to identify and read Human Chromosomes: Size: This is the most clear way to tell chromosomes apart. Banding pattern: Also called, Giemsa bands on the chromosomes make each pair unique. Centromere position: These are areas on chromosomes that look banded. They have … Continue reading
“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 genetically determined: eye color, natural hair color, blood type, and the Rhesus factor. Using a sample of over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian college students supplemented with additional homosexual subjects obtained through internet contacts, we found no significant differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals regarding eye color or hair color. In the case of blood type and the Rh factor, however, interesting patterns emerged. Heterosexual males and females exhibited statistically identical frequencies of the A blood type, while gay men exhibited a relatively low incidence and lesbians had a relatively high incidence (p < .05). In the case of the Rh factor, unusually high proportions of homosexuals of both sexes were Rh- when compared to heterosexuals (p < .06). The findings suggest that a connection may exist between sexual orientation and genes both on chromosome 9 (where blood type is determined) and on chromosome 1 (where the Rh factor is regulated).”
Link to the Abstract below…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18074215
