order online: bits of deadly virii

The Guardian reports they ordered a chunk of the smallpox virus DNA sequence online from a molecular biology supply company. It's not as dire as it might sound: you gotta have graduate-level expertise and more than a kitchen sink to recombine DNA sequences. What was interesting was that there is no across-the-board screening of all … Read more

paper: unexpected NRY chromosome variation in Melanesia

Unexpected NRY chromosome variation in Northern Island Melanesia Scheinfeldt et al Molecular Biology and Evolution, Advance Access doi:10.1093/molbev/msl028 To investigate the paternal population history of populations in Northern Island Melanesia, 685 paternally unrelated males from 36 populations in this region and New Guinea were analyzed at 14 regionally informative binary markers and seven short-tandem-repeat loci … Read more

ashkenazi founder event

The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event Behar, D. M.; Metspalu, E.; Kivisild, T.; Achilli, A.; Hadid, Y.; Tzur, S.; Pereira, L.; Amorim, A.; Quintana-Murci, L.; Majamaa, K. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS VOL 78; NUMB 3 (2006) pp. 487-497  Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme … Read more