BENCE VIOLAScientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues who sequenced and analyzed DNA from a female Neanderthal toe bone unearthed in Siberia suggest that the individual’s parents were close relatives and that such inbreeding was prevalent among her recent ancestors. Comparative analyses also showed that interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and other hominin groups, including early modern humans.
The study provides “good evidence that there’s been constant interbreeding between different human groups all through prehistory,” said Milford Wolpoff, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.
WIKIPEDIA, SCOTT ZONAThe genome of the sister species of all flowering plants will help scientists understand the ancient origins of angiosperms, according to researchers who sequenced the understory tree Amborella trichopoda this week. “The traits that Amborella shares with the other angiosperms can be interpreted as primitive traits that were present in their shared ancestor,” said Claude dePamphilis from Pennsylvania State University, one of the project’s leaders. “Now that we have Amborella’s genome, we can infer those traits and get the first real insights into what that common ancestor was like, genetically.”
WIKIMEDIA, ROBERT M. HUNTIn part due to the lengths of primary cilia, the topography of the surface on which mesenchymal stem cells grow on can influence how they develop and differentiate, researchers from Queen Mary University of London reported this week (December 18). “This intricate study is a wonderful contribution to the growing body of evidence demonstrating the powerful role of the primary cilium in regulating stem cell differentiation,” David Hoey, a biomedical engineer at the University of Limerick in Ireland who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist.
FLICKR, NIAIDTwo papers published this week (December 19) describe the molecular mechanisms that cause the HIV-inflicted death of most CD4 T cells in lymphoid tissues during infection. Two teams have now shown that the vast majority of the T cells, despite their ability to resist full infection by HIV, respond to the presence of viral DNA by sacrificing themselves via pyroptosis, which attracts more such cells to the area to die and ultimately weakens the immune system.
“This cell-death pathway links the two signatures of HIV disease progression—that is, CD4 T ...
