Genome

Two new studies have shed light on just how often our ancestors got frisky with Neanderthals. Scientists analyzed the genomes of 45,000-year-old human remains found in Czechia and Bulgaria, including the oldest known genome of a modern human.

Scientists have sequenced the genome of a “living fossil” from the time our ancestors first crawled out of the oceans. The Australian lungfish genome is the largest of any animal sequenced so far, revealing it to be our closest living fish relative.

A new piece of open source software can radically speed up the process of DNA sequencing, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. Using a portable sequencer, the UNCALLED software can cut a 15-day operation down to three days, or even one.

Researchers have resurrected woolly mammoth genes, from one of the last known mammoth populations, in the lab. These mammoths were believed to have suffered genetic defects, and in tests the team found that the genes did not function normally.

The Pan-Cancer Project is an international collaboration dedicated to analyzing thousands of whole cancer genomes. The results have been published, revealing new details about cancer’s causes, development, classification, diagnosis and treatment.

Scientists have extracted a complete human genome from a 5,700-year-old piece of "chewing gum." It was discovered that the chewer was an ancient female – now named Lola – with dark skin, blue eyes, and most likely a taste for duck and hazelnuts.

Researchers have managed to successfully edit the genes of lizards with CRISPR for the first time, turning them albino.

The human genome can tell us where we’ve come from, and it’s hiding more than a few surprises. Now researchers from the University of Adelaide have found evidence of two unknown, archaic human species in modern DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA in plants is so complex that scientists haven’t yet been able to edit the genes in there. Now a team of Japanese researchers has managed to do just that, which could help improve the genetic diversity of crops.

Humans are currently locked in an arms race against pathogenic bacteria – and we’re losing. Now scientists have identified the genes responsible for antibiotic resistance in a particularly dangerous superbug, and found a way to thwart them.

While exploring the “dark heart” of the human genome, geneticists have now found some of the most ancient pieces of DNA, inherited from Neanderthals and an as-yet-unknown human relative, which may be affecting our sense of smell to this day.

It’s no secret that tomatoes plucked from the supermarket aisles just aren’t that tasty. To find taste genes that could be spliced back into commercial crops, researchers have complied a pan-genome of all cultivated and related wild tomato species, uncovering almost 5,000 previously-unknown genes.