By Will Dunham (Reuters) – About 4,000 years ago, the last of Earth’s woolly mammoths died out on a lonely Arctic Ocean island off the coast of Siberia, a melancholy end to one of the world’s charismatic Ice Age animals. But what doomed this last mammoth population on Wrangel Island? A new genomic analysis deepens […]
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – An Argentine scientific institute has cracked the genome of the leafhopper, the insect which carries the bacteria responsible for wiping out vast swathes of the South American nation’s latest corn crop, the government said on Tuesday. The development, which determined the Dalbulus maidis’ genetic makeup, will serve future efforts to fight […]
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but some plants have a lot more DNA than others. And perhaps even more baffling, some have a lot more than most animals — including humans. Now, scientists […]
Fun Sized Small, but mighty! Scientists just discovered the largest genome ever sequenced — in an itty-bitty Pacific fern. Per the New York Times, the newly-sequenced fern was tracked down by an international team of scientists in the wilds of Grande Terre, a volcanic archipelago in New Caledonia. “It doesn’t catch the eye,” botanist Jaume Pellicer, […]
STORY: Here in the wilderness of New Caledonia – scientists have discovered a living organism with the largest genome in the world. :: RGB KEW “And particularly it’s exciting because it’s a plant.” New research shows that the genome size of this fork fern species… is estimated to be more than 50 times the size […]
By Will Dunham (Reuters) – You thought the living organism with ;/”he largest genome might be the blue whale, an African elephant or perhaps a giant redwood tree? Not even close. A human being? Wrong again. That honor instead goes to a little fern that grows in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in […]
A rare fork fern found in the island nation of New Caledonia has become a world record holder. Scientists have discovered that the tiny plant, which grows in the trunks and branches of trees, has the largest genome of any living organism. If unraveled, the DNA contained in a single cell of Tmesipteris oblanceolata would […]
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Flowering plants – from corn, wheat, rice and potatoes to maple, oak, apple and cherry trees as well as roses, tulips, daisies and dandelions and even the corpse flower and voodoo lily – are cornerstones of Earth’s ecosystems and essential for humankind. New research based on genome data for […]
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – You might call it a cup of Joe, java, mud, brew, mocha, or your morning jolt. Coffee undoubtedly is a big part of global culture, and the kind made from the Arabica bean is the most appreciated by coffee drinkers. Researchers now have unlocked the genome of the Arabica […]
Remnants of ancient viral pandemics in the form of viral DNA sequences embedded in our genomes are still active in healthy people, according to new research my colleagues and I recently published. HERVs, or human endogenous retroviruses, make up around 8% of the human genome, left behind as a result of infections that humanity’s primate […]
The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and life less than a billion years after that. Although life as we know it is dependent on four major macromolecules – DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids – only one is thought to have been present at the beginning of life: RNA. It is no surprise that RNA […]