The Blog of Science

A group of Israeli scientists have achieved the unthinkable when they germinated a 2,000 year-old seed of date palm. The seed, nicknamed Methuselah was found in the ruins of Herod’s palace, and after 26 months, it grew into a 1.2 metres tall plant.
Now the world’s oldest successful germination, Methuselah was found in the 60’s in […]

As biotechnology advances and the methods to detect and analyse DNA are more sensitive and accurate, scientists have found a new twist to the power of DNA. A recent paper in Biology Letters reports that it has been possible to detect the presence of the invasive frog American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) in ponds by measuring […]

For the first time, stem cells from human embryos have been obtained without destroying the embryo from which they come. The breakthrough overcomes the main objection to the ethics of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research - the embryos must be killed to get hES cells.
The new method removes a single cell from the embryo […]

DNA testing to establish ancestry are becoming very popular and are being offered by several companies. As the knowledge about the genetic composition of human populations accumulates, the manufacturers are including more markers to their tests in order to make them more accurate and span more ancestral lineages.
Geneticists from the Department of Genetics, University of […]

Researchers from Heinrich Pette Institute of Experimental Virology and Immunology at Hamburg produced a special enzyme able to “cure” HIV-infected human lymphocytes in laboratory assays. The study, published in Science constitutes a potential advancement in the struggle against HIV-AIDS. So far, experts assumed that the infection with the Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was irreversible because […]

An increasing number of people are using commercial genetic tests to look into their ancestry. However, these tests can have important limitations according to Deborah Bolnick, assistant professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. In a recent article published in the prestigious journal Science Bolnick and a team of researchers from different […]