“ Scientists have at last uncovered the closest living relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, the most feared and famous of all the dinosaurs. For the first time, researchers have managed to sequence proteins from the long-extinct creature, leading them to the discovery that many of the molecules show a remarkable similarity to those of the humble chicken.”

Who are you calling chicken?

I have had young roosters and they hunt as a pack, more similar to Velociraptors as shown on Jurassic Park then T. Rexes, chasing my dog away to get at his food.

On Nature:

Human genome more variable

“ Scientists have identified the oldest known bee, a 100 million-year-old specimen preserved in amber. The discovery coincides with the publication of the genetic blueprint of the honeybee, which reveals surprising links with mammals and humans. The ancient insect, trapped in tree sap, is at least 35-45 million years older than any other known bee fossil.”

Bee fossil DNA generate a buzz

“ Type genetic testing into a search engine and you'll see an array of paid adverts along the sides of the page, offering screening tests, DNA tests, paternity tests and genealogy tests. It's a thriving business. What's not as clear in the adverts is that the foundations of the business could best be called shallow.”

Genetic medics build high hopes

“ An online visualization of a user-chosen website through a graphical DNA-like data mapping approach. The brightness of the lines is determined by the importance of the tags in terms of structure, so that a semantically rich site will appear brighter than one with messy old-style code. A site that focuses on (text) content is one where the DNA patterns are large (filling many containers), but contains a lot of empty spaces between the lines (empty space is the individual words).” via infosthetics

web2dna

On Nature:

You're only as old as your genes

genetic fingerprint could pinpoint fittest organ donors

Neanderthal genome in two years

we have the modern human genome. Now researchers are set to sequence the DNA of our extinct cousins: Neanderthal man