If you are taller, are you smarter?

All kinds of correlations can be found around intelligent people, some more spurious than others. As the most intelligent people work mostly for another (less intelligent), the so-called law of Joy. Another compelling correlation is that tall people are more intelligent than short people . But can a factor like height really influence our brain … Read more

The genes that make us athletes

One question we could ask ourselves is whether aspects such as work or the tendency to play sports are fully acquired traits or do they really have an important genetic component . Theodore Garland, a physiologist at the University of California Riverside, with his team, did a series of experiments in which he was able … Read more

The Winter of Hunger

"Winter is Coming" has a real-world equivalent: Hongerwinter , that is, the Winter of Hunger, which took place between 1944 and 1945 in Holland. It was neither the first nor the most insidious famine in human history: heavy rains in the early 1300s reduced harvests to such an extent that a quarter of the entire … Read more

Do twin brothers live longer?

Both dizygotic twins or twins (from two eggs) and monozygotic (developed from a single egg) have a longer life expectancy, according to a new study published in PlOS ONE . In the case of monozygotes, life expectancy is still older than twins. The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Washington, who … Read more

If people seem idiotic to you, could the solution be eugenics?

Ford Fairlane said that "so much asshole, so few bullets", which is very true (even taking into account the Lake Wobegon bias). But how can we increase people’s intelligence? A drastic solution is eugenics, a Wagnerian madness that has excited characters like Hitler . However, perhaps things could be done in another, more acceptable way. … Read more

CRISPR-edited genes introduced into humans for the first time

A man suffering from aggressive lung cancer has been the first to receive genes with CRISPR , that is, genes edited by scissors called CRISPR / Cas9 that allow it to be done so easily that they promise to revolutionize gene therapy and were developed by scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012 The … Read more

The genome of the oldest tree species is sequenced: ginkgo biloba

It is a living fossil, it is the oldest tree species, it even survived the nuclear effects of Hiroshima, and now its genome has been sequenced. It is the ginkgo biloba, a tree native to China, with an exceptionally large genome , totaling more than 10 billion ‘letters’ of DNA. The Beijing Biosciences Institute (BGI), … Read more

Stopping being Homo sapiens thanks to genetic engineering

We are at the forefront of the paradigm of our species, an evolutionary leap: to overcome Homo sapiens , for the first time in history, regardless of blind natural evolution . For 4 billion years, natural selection has been readjusting our bodies for the sake of survival, making it easier for us to go from … Read more

The first semi-synthetic stable organism is born

The first stable semi-synthetic organism , which incorporates a synthetic base pair in its genetic code, was born for the first time thanks to the development of researchers at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). The genetic code of life contains only four bases in its genetic code (called A, T, C and G), which every … Read more

Why is intelligent design a fallacy?

One of the most repeated arguments to discredit Darwinian evolution and, by contrast, defend intelligent design , is the analogy of the clock in the desert. It was first proposed in 1802 by William Paley in his book Natural Theology , arguing that a watch found in the desert could not be an accident or … Read more

This gene therapy makes deaf mice hear whispers

Using a gene therapy vector (in which deficient genes are replaced by healthy genes) developed by Massachusetts Eye and Ear in an experiment with mice, a team of researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston has succeeded in getting a group of deaf mice to restore their hearing to the point that they could hear whispers … Read more

The genes that determine your height are discovered and that is important

Understanding the genetic complexity of height and the rare DNA changes that influence it can provide clues to studying multifactorial health problems such as diabetes and heart disease. This happens for two reasons: first, because height is determined by many different genes; and second, because height is easy to measure and provides a relatively simple … Read more

A mutation would explain why it costs you to go to bed

Despite the fact that the next day you have to get up early, there are people who resist going to bed early. It’s not that they aren’t tired, it’s that they don’t even consider it natural. Who goes to bed before midnight? Some of these subjects could argue, from now on, that they may be … Read more

Scientists create these red-eyed ants thanks to CRISPR

Thanks to CRISPR gene editing technology, researchers at UC Riverside’s Akbari Laboratory have brought a new breed of mutant red-eyed wasps into the world. Thanks to this, it will be possible to better understand the biology of the so-called jewel ant , which is capable of converting all its progeny into males using ‘selfish’ genetic … Read more

Thanks to science, we can now make better beer

Beer does not stop reinventing itself , we even already have a beer specifically made to be consumed when we travel by plane (at such a height, our taste atrophies). Now, thanks to the fact that the barley genome has been sequenced , beer production could take on another dimension . Decoding the barley This … Read more