Topic description and stories

Metabolic cooperation in a social Baker’s yeast community. Pictured is a two-day old yeast community that grows as a colony. Different colours indicate cells producing and consuming different metabolites and nutrients.

Social yeast cells prefer to work with close relatives to make our beer, bread & wine

26 Oct 2015

Baker’s yeast cells living together in communities help feed each other, but leave incomers from the same species to die from starvation, according...

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Left: Skull of a Yamnaya, the people who migrated to Central Asia in early Bronze Age and developed the Afanasievo culture. The Afanasievo are one of the Bronze Age groups carrying Y. pestis. Right: Scanning Electron Micrograph Of A Flea

Plague in humans ‘twice as old’ but didn’t begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals

22 Oct 2015

New research dates plague back to the early Bronze Age, showing it had been endemic in humans across Eurasia for millennia prior to the first...

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Tasmanian Devil

Tasmanian Devils and the transmissible cancer that threatens their extinction

14 Oct 2015

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, T is for...

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Archaeologists outside the entrance to the Mota cave in the Ethiopian highlands, where the remains containing the ancient genome were discovered.

Ancient genome from Africa sequenced for the first time

08 Oct 2015

DNA from 4,500-year-old Ethiopian skull reveals a large migratory wave of West Eurasians into the Horn of Africa around 3,000 years ago had a genetic...

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Ovum in Cumulus Oophorus, Human Ovary

Greater understanding of polycystic ovary syndrome

29 Sep 2015

A new genetic study of over 200,000 women reveals the underlying mechanisms of polycystic ovary syndrome, as well as potential interventions.

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Human egg

Maintaining healthy DNA delays menopause

28 Sep 2015

An international study of nearly 70,000 women has identified more than forty regions of the human genome that are involved in governing at what age a...

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DNA representation

Expanding the DNA alphabet: ‘extra’ DNA base found to be stable in mammals

22 Jun 2015

A rare DNA base, previously thought to be a temporary modification, has been shown to be stable in mammalian DNA, suggesting that it plays a key role...

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DNA/protein function finder from the Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute, emblebi and YourGenome

The Big Dating Game

09 Jun 2015

When is a rare disease not a rare disease? The answer: when big data gets involved. An ambitious new research project aims to show patients that they...

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Reset button (edited)

Reprogramming of DNA observed in human germ cells for first time

04 Jun 2015

A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge has described for the first time in humans how the epigenome – the suite of molecules...

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Professor Richard Gilbertson

Childhood brain tumour expert to lead Cambridge Cancer Centre

26 Mar 2015

One of the world’s leading childhood brain tumour experts, Professor Richard Gilbertson, has been appointed as Li Ka Shing Chair of Oncology in...

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Details from infographic produced by Arizona State University

Decline in the number of males involved in reproduction during the period of global growth

17 Mar 2015

Wealth and power may have played a stronger role than “survival of the fittest”.

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DNA (cropped)

Human genome includes 'foreign' genes not from our ancestors

12 Mar 2015

Many animals, including humans, acquired essential ‘foreign’ genes from microorganisms co-habiting their environment in ancient times, according to...

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