Quote: Boyd on New World pigmentation clines
I'm using some statistics out of William Boyd's 1956 printing of Genetics and the Races of Man[1]. It gives a good accounting of blood group data known more than fifty years ago, which I'm using to...
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Spatial dispersal, parallel adaptation, and the "Stooge effect"
Peter Ralph and Graham Coop have an interesting paper in the current Genetics, titled, "Parallel Adaptation: One or Many Waves of Advance of an Advantageous Allele?"[1]Fisher [2] famously considered...
View ArticleNeolithic milk fog
Razib points today to an article in Der Spiegel about the revival of folk migration as an explanation for the Neolithic in Europe. His post ("Völkerwanderung back with a vengeance") is worth reading....
View ArticleNow for anthropological genomics
The first of the papers describing results from the 1000 Genomes project has been released today in Nature[1]. This is "big project" genomics news. Like many announcements of this kind, it represents...
View ArticleCopy number variation in 1000 Genomes
When I wrote earlier in the week about the 1000 Genomes Project results, I mentioned that a second paper was being published in Science. That paper, by Peter Sudmant and colleagues [1], works to...
View ArticleWhen genes break: validating loss-of-function variants
Daniel MacArthur and colleagues have an important paper in Science, titled "A Systematic Survey of Loss-of-Function Variants in Human Protein-Coding Genes"[1]. They took 1000 Genomes Project pilot data...
View ArticleHow I got into anthropology
I was noodling around online and found a video interview from last year's Darwin Day event here at UW. Regular readers won't learn anything new in the first few minutes, but at around 4:20, I start...
View ArticleQuote: Lederberg on Haldane
J. B. S. Haldane has typically been assigned credit for the first suggestion that human hemoglobinopathies are adaptations to malaria. In 1999, Joshua Lederberg examined the history of this question...
View ArticleSelection is for the dogs
I was really pleased to see the new paper by Erik Axelsson and colleagues [1] on the pattern of recent selection on domesticated dogs. As we began working on recent selection in humans, we expected...
View ArticleTracing teeth troubles with fossil bacteria
Ed Yong has a great account today of some research from Alan Cooper's lab on the oral microbiome in pre-agricultural and post-agricultural Europeans: "Prehistoric Plaque and the Gentrification of...
View ArticleMy review of "Paleofantasy"
I have a review of Marlene Zuk's new book, Paleofantasy, in this week's Nature: "Evolutionary biology: Twisting the tale of human evolution"[1]. I can't replicate my review here, but for people who...
View ArticleCulture-gene coevolution and language
Simon Fisher and Matt Ridley, in a recent essay in Science, discuss the relationship between the genetic mutations that distinguish humans and other primates and the behavioral traits that those...
View ArticleLactase persistence in review
Nature this week has a nice news article about the evolution of lactase persistence by Andrew Curry: "Archaeology: The milk revolution". The article discusses the "LeCHE" project, a multi-million...
View ArticleUpcoming lecture: International Congress on Celiac Disease 2013
I know that many readers are interested in our research on genetic networks and recent human evolution. I will be delivering a keynote presentation next month at the International Congress on Celiac...
View ArticleHumans are still evolving, and soon we'll know a lot more about it
Lots of readers have asked me to react to this Telegraph article: "Sir David Attenborough: Humans have stopped evolving":“We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 95–99 per...
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