Category: Featured

Ola, on The lactose reflux problem:

Introgression from Neanderthals as a source of adaptive variation is a fascinating hypothesis; I like the idea that Homo sapiens have benefited from alleles from wild relatives. Recent adaptation and all the signs of positive selection in human population following the shift to agriculture based diets expose the fallacy of proponents of the Paleolithic diet … not to mention all the doctor Atkins disciples out there.

Time for a genome sweep.

Vernon Heywood on Assisting crop wild relatives:

Moving species into new environments is … a contentious issue and may involve considerable risks. It is a complex issue involving not just scientific, technical and economic but sociological and ethical considerations. It requires a sound and well thought out policy framework before it is widely undertaken as a management response to global change but might be prove to be appropriate in a number of high priority species such as CWR of major crops.

Who else is doing the thinking? And where?

Carla Barber, from Canada’s National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute, offers a glimpse of the genebank database that will be launched in about a month:

The seed database … supports searching of various scientific data associated with each seed line such as Agronomic, Biochemical, Phenotypic, Genetic, Proteomic, Structural, Publications, as well as the option to integrate more Data Categories in the future.

Do you believe in Heaven?

Jacob, on Agrobiodiversity everywhere:

Other world maps of commodity flows: Fertilizers; Sugar; Vegetables; Cotton; Flowers; Coffee and cocoa. The information is a bit dated, but the maps are cool.