News by Subject Biology

Researchers comparing clonal strains of the mycobacteria that cause TB, before and after they developed resistance to a first-line drug, found that a single genetic change may not always have identical effects on bacterial fitness.

Fishing quotas have been decided using an inadequate method for decades, according to a Scientific Reports study. The same method has also been used to decide about culling, hunting quotas, or translocating threatened species. Analysing the nuclear genome of sardines shows previously unrecognised genetic differences between populations, which are not identified by the go-to-method for Isolation-By-Distance, mitochondrial DNA analysis.

Researchers from Aarhus University and University of Gothenburg have produced the most comprehensive family tree and atlas of mammals to date, connecting all living and recently extinct mammal species (nearly 6,000 in total) and overturning many previous ideas about global patterns of biodiversity. The atlas shows where species occur today as well as where they would occur, if they had not been driven away or extinct. The database is publicly available.

When scientists at ETH Zurich analysed huge amounts of genetic cancer data, they found previously unresearched molecular changes. These could help in developing new personalised cancer treatments.

There are two types of fear: learned versus innate. The latter is known to be induced without any prior experience and is thus naturally encoded in the brain. A research team under Professor Jin-Hee Han in the Department of Biological Sciences identified the brain circuit responsible for regulating the innate fear response.

For nearly 60 years, the red fox has been teaching scientists about animal behavior. In a long-term experiment, Russian foxes have been selected for tameness or aggression, recreating the process of domestication from wolves to modern dogs in real time. Today, with the first-ever publication of the fox genome, scientists will begin to understand the genetic basis of tame and aggressive behaviors, which could shed light on human behavior, as well.