Study Reveals How Genetic Uniformity Affects Offspring Fertility for Generations

When it comes to the architecture of the human genome, it’s only a matter of time before harmful genes — genes that could compromise future generations — arise in a population. These mutations accumulate in the gene pool, primarily affected by a population’s size and practices like marrying within a small community. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal provides rare direct evidence showing that increased homozygosity — meaning two identical alleles in a genome — leads to negative effects on fertility in a human population.

The Tangled Fate of Math and Biology with Mariel Vazquez

From pocketed headphones to carelessly packed garden hoses, knots find ways to manifest. Even our DNA molecules get tied in knots too. Professor Mariel Vazquez applies her training in mathematics to fundamental questions about DNA structure and functionality.

How a South African Community’s Request for Its Genetic Data Raises Questions About Ethical and Equitable Research

For the past decade, genetic researchers from the Henn Lab have worked among the Khoe-San and self-identified “Coloured” communities in South Africa, requesting DNA and generating genetic data to help unravel the history and prehistory of southern Africans and their relationship to populations around the world. However, the researchers have been unable to fulfill a common request: providing them their individual genetic ancestry results. What they found is that there is no easy answer.

Denisovans or Homo Sapiens: Who Were the First to Settle (Permanently) on the Tibetan Plateau?

The Tibetan Plateau has long been considered one of the last places to be populated by people in their migration around the globe. A new paper by archaeologists at UC Davis highlights that our extinct cousins, the Denisovans, reached the “roof of the world” about 160,000 years ago — 120,000 years earlier than previous estimates for our species — and even contributed to our adaptation to high altitude.

Unique Sled Dogs Helped the Inuit Thrive in the North American Arctic

Inuit sled dogs have changed little since people migrated with them to the North American Arctic across the Bering Strait from Siberia, according to UC Davis researchers and colleagues who have examined DNA from the dogs from that time span. The legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in Arctic sled dogs, making them one of the last remaining descendant populations of indigenous, pre-European dog lineages in the Americas.