Natural selection is one of the central mechanisms of evolutionary change and is the process responsible for the evolution of adaptive features.

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An international team led by the Scripps Research Institute in California said on Thursday it is the safest method yet found to transform ordinary skin cells into what are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. More Articles

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Red pandas have surprised researchers by demonstrating a liking of artificial sweeteners.

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The British researchers discovered that the new auditory cells produced from the fetal cells, performed identically to existing cells in developing ears. Researchers are also studying the use of embryonic and adult stem cells for their studies on restoring hearing loss.

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"I just think it's immoral to create life and destroy it in the name of science," said Georgia State Sen. Ralph Hudgens. "In Nazi Germany they did experiments with human beings. I don't want to see that done here."

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If they are otherwise to be destroyed, then does not the good that can be done to heal disease outweigh protecting a non-existent potential? Theologians must advise the bishops that there is a difference between metaphysical potentiality and this specific case. More Articles

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Here is a fascinating synopsis article from the Public Libraries of Science on the scientific defensibility of US laws that prohibit marriage between cousins. The big twist: there ain't none.

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Our tendencies to form friends and join networks may be inborn. The "blank" slate becomes more and more deeply engraved with baked-in behaviours.

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Scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH in Toronto) have detected evidence that DNA may not be the only carrier of heritable information; a secondary molecular mechanism called epigenetics may also account for some inherited traits and diseases.

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Ever since researchers discovered in the 1970s that humans lacked the genetic variation expected of our population size, they have proposed that our ancestors went through a big squeeze: Volcanic eruptions, disease, or climate change created a population "bottleneck" that reduced …

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In both cultures, many of the same gene families were triggered, suggesting some sort of common master regulator that determines the response of salmonella to its environment.

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Physicians at four European universities have completed what they say is the first successful transplant of a human windpipe using a patient's own stem cells to fashion an organ and prevent its rejection by her immune system, according to an article in the British medical journ …

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A classic experiment exploring the origin of life has, more than a half-century later, yielded new results. More Articles

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These days almost everyone gets to hand their genes on through their children.

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Researchers now pondering physical cues for cell differentiation are rediscovering what has long both captivated and aggravated their colleagues studying chemical cues. "We create some external conditions," says Forgacs, "and then we have no control over the system.

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Just imagine: You're turning 40 this year, and your New Year's resolution was to work on your future health issues.

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Scientists have shown for the first time how a particular family of diseases are passed down from mother to child and how this can lead to the severity of the disease differing widely.

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A group of scientists in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology has uncovered a new biological mechanism that could provide a clearer window into a cell's inner workings.

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There was no missing the similarities: the flat bridge of their noses, the thin lips, the fold near the corner of their eyes. And to the families of 14-year-old Samantha Napier and 4-year-old Taygen Lane there was something else, too.

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Interventions at every age from infancy to college can reduce racial gaps in I.Q., sometimes by substantial amounts in surprisingly little time.

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A study by John Hopkins University estimates that there is one albino for every seventeen thousand people in the world. In Aicuña, according to Julio César Ormeño, the head of the Vital Records Office, there live about three hundred people.

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REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

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It's rather like the same set of notes being played in very different ways.

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FORGET genetic engineering. The new idea is synthetic biology, an effort by engineers to rewire the genetic circuitry of living organisms.

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Thomas Jefferson's Y chromosome, a male-specific part of our DNA that passes down from father to son, is of a variety found often in the Middle East.

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