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Are You Part Neanderthal? Check Your Hair and Teeth

Are you part Neanderthal? Of course we would never consider ourselves to be part brute but that is what our DNA is telling us. A majority of us have a few percentage points of Neanderthal DNA within our bodies. Ironically those things that make us look attractive like hair and teeth are more closely tied to our ancient ancestors.  Studies in the journal Nature and Science help us think about human development from the beginning of time until now. It is believed the Neanderthal was a northern creature while humans came from Africa. Somewhere along the path they interbred and the Neanderthal died off. Apparently, the males were not so great at breeding when mixed.  Human development appears to be on a continuum from the past to some marked point in the future. Each child creates a new genetic destiny based upon a historical past and develops something unique. As the environment changes, humans change with it to ensure they able to survive and pass on their genetic code. 

Checking Out with DNA Barcodes

Looks are deceiving among gulls. Young ring-billed gulls have brown spots and can look different than adult gulls. Coding helps to determine if they are the same or different species to avoid mislabeling. Info DNA mapping of species is becoming a popular practice due to its accuracy. Researchers have difficulty seeing small differences among species that are similar and have moved to mapping chloroplast DNA. ( 1 ). The concept has been called DNA barcoding because each species comes with a unique map that helps to denote their origins.  Researchers believe that the DNA bar coding trend will likely help understand marine species and development ( 2 ). Sometimes sea life is hard to discern from each other. At other times, species found on the coast are decomposed and difficult to identify. By testing their DNA they are able to find out what they are, where they came from, and the school that is in the area.  Bird mapping is already in process. Most bird species dive

Are Native Americans and Europeans Related?

A 24,000-year-old arm bone indicates that Native Americans may be cousins to Eurasians. DNA samples along with current projects to map the DNA of Native Americans have made new discoveries. It was found that the Native Americans share about 18% to 38% with Eurasian and other genomes with East Asians. This may mean that Native Americans are really a mixing of genetics between Eurasians and East Asians that create a distinct identity.  The scientists originally thought they contaminated the samples and put the tests on hold. A year later, they found the same results. They began to look around the American continent for other examples and came across the 9,000-year-old Paleo-Indian found in Washington. To their amazement this Native had features more European than East Asian.  It was believed that earlier studies with Eurasian DNA were a result of mixtures with Europeans after settlement and colonization. Now it is possible that such DNA structures are actually deeper and can

Is Europe One Big DNA Strand? How Related Are We?

Recent research indicates that Europeans may actually hold similar genetic traits that make most people related to everyone else on the continent. So do you have a great cousin in France or Turkey? The research helps to highlight how a similar ancestry made its genetic line throughout the continent retaining DNA similarity. This same phenomenon may actually exist in other areas of the world as well but has not yet been tested.  Professor Graham Coop from the University of California recently published on May 7 th , 2013 in the journal P LO S biology that nearly all Europeans are related to each other. “ What’s remarkable about this is how closely everyone is related to each other. On a genealogical level, everyone in Europe traces back to nearly the same set of ancestors only a thousand years ago, ” (UC Davis, 2013).  Coop along with his co partner Peter Ralph set out to study DNA samples to trace back family origin to 3000 years ago. What they found through 2,000 samples