Genetics

Any thoughts on how many generations of selective breeding it would require to produce animals significantly different from the general population? Maybe for an example how many generations would be required to produce a pug-faced poodle if you started with regular poodles? I know many of the dog breeds have been "reshaped" over the last 100 years. So that would have to be less than 100 generations I would think.

I let sequence my entire DNA for only 700 $. Great idea?

I recently read the book Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and I was shocked. I mean literally shocked to know that I am just DNA molecules existing to replicate. I mean so the life we are living is meaningless from human point of view. I mean what about all the philosophy, meaning in life and so on. I mean how does the DNA know that it has to replicate. Who gives it that Intelligence? Is DNA an entity like us? Please clarify

Is it possible to create a Queen bee effect on humans? There are all of these problems with secret service men leaving there posts and not protecting the president like they should... Well if we could find a way to make these officers act like a bee(or ant) does to there Queen then we wouldn't have the problems. I know that the reactions from the bees is cause of a pheromone that the queen produces, but what if we could reproduce this in the humans.Make them attracted to the president the way bees are to there queen... It may seem in human but It would be a great help to the U.S. goverment if it was sucessful... (P.s I apologize for my spelling mistakes... Spell…

Hello can anyone help me the meaning of Profiling miRNA in this topic? miRNA Expression Profiling in Melanocytes and Melanoma Cell Lines Reveals miRNAs Associated with Formation and Progression of Malignant Melanoma

Greetings all, My husband and I are debating the odds of our future child's eye color. I have blue eyes, while my husband has heterochromia iridium and iridis, complicating things a bit. One eye is blue, while the other is light brown with about a quarter of his iris blue. Both my parents' eyes are blue, while his parents have blue eyes and brown eyes. Any thoughts?

Two unrelated people of the same gender do look different, they have a different face morphology. Now I am asking me how many SNPs do determine the big part of the difference when it come to face morphology. I don't think SO many SNPs are responsible for the difference in face morphology. I guess ca. 2000 until 4000 SNPs are responsible for the difference in face morphology. This would make up only 0,0001% of the DNA sequence! What do you believe?

While most people think of GMO as food crops I have been thinking of GMO pets, specifically aquarium fishes. If you could modify the genes of certain fish to make them smaller as adults it would be highly profitable. Stingrays are very popular but most quickly outgrow all but the largest tanks. A freshwater ray that stayed less than 6" across the disc would be highly sought after. Other freshwater fishes of unusual types such as sturgeon or paddle fish would also bring big returns. Sharks would be a bit more difficult for freshwater but even saltwater sharks that were small as adults would bring a high demand. many fish would work although some are alr…

Greetings community, some days ago after taking a shower, I was looking at my feet and I suddenly found a hair in my leg that was almost invisible, I wonder if it is normal, if so, why does it happen? Is it related to my DNA? PD: My video doesnt upload

Hey there! I am a bit confused with my book as it mentions: "When the distance between 2 genes (on the same chromosome) decreases, thus the chance of recombination decreases and the phenomenon of the independent assortment increases(!) So my question is: how the heck the phenomenon of independent assortment increases? Shouldn't it decrease? Thanks, Dagreton

Hi everyone. I'm breeding a small hamster species Phodopus Roborovskii that is relatively speaking new to the pet trade. As a result there are not a lot of genetic morphs or coat colors documented and for the most part they are wild type agouti. My theory that when new phenotype variations pop up it is unlikely that the mutation occurred right then. More likely it occurred and was unknowingly carried for generations until someone crossed two related individuals who happened to be carriers. So I was thinking if I wanted try and reveal some undocumented recessive alleles what would be the best way to go about it. My thought is the best way to test all the allel…

Hello everyone, Recently I got very interested in Biology and especially genetics and evolution. But I have a question that I don't seem to get answered, or maybe I don't understand the answer enough, so I wondered if somebody could help me out? So the question is how DNA "knows" wich phenotype it needs to be? What I understand from evolution theory (I'm still studying it so correct me if I'm wrong) is that organisms that adapt better to certain enviorment, are more likely to survive and reproduce, so there will be more organism with the certain gen that produces the favorable type of change. An example wich I saw in a documentary got me thinking. The example was …

Hello I'm new here and I have a question that I hope will be answered. I understand that many annual plants die after setting seeds even before first frosts.If we would to somehow make a plant unable to set seeds,say,for example making it triploid,would this effectively make it a sterile perennial plant that would just keep growing?

if i understand correctly we have ancestors that had 24 pairs. i sort of get how one animal with 23 can result from parents with 24 (faulty meiosis?) but how could that individ breed with someone that had 24? or does this (or any) alteration in number of chromosones presuppose that he/she mates with another individual with the same "error" ? pelle

If an organism is a dominant homozygote for a trait, are both alleles expressed or just one? If just one, which one? No co- or incomplete dominance situation things, just AA or Aa resulting in one trait and aa another. Maybe it's a simple question but I couldn't find anything addressing it. Thanks!

I have a question about how to report incidental findings in exome samples for the clinical diagnostic purposes. I have read the ACMG recommendations for reporting incidental findings in patients and tried to filter out the pathogenic variants in the 56 genes suggested to be checked by ACMG. When I filter out the variants using common polymorphisms in dbSNP142, the remaining pathogenic variants are mostly not so much. However, without this filtration there would be around 20 remaining variants on average that should be checked manually to investigate their probable pathogenicity. Most of these variants are the common polymorphisms (reported through GWAS studies) which are…

I am building a script that takes exons from a particular gene and then plots them by their base pair coordinates on a 2D graph. Using data from Ensembl, I can match each exon to its respective transcript and protein domain. I use data from Ensemble to match each domain to the gene base pairs responsible for its formation; I can then plot the protein domains above their respective exon(s). However, my plot currently shows that certain introns are responsible for domain formations—in my particular case, gene ENSG00000111671 is coding domain SOCS_C from an intron — block I6.1. I am taking the raw coordinates from ensembl for both gene and protein—I was wondering how this…

Is there a way to get a quantitative prediction out of a literal reading of the Old Testament. The Young Earth Creationists hold that the OT is literally true. The human race started with two individuals roughly 6000 years ago. 4000 years ago, the resulting population was culled to a family of 8. That family of 8 gave rise to everyone alive now. Is there a way to see quantitatively how much genetic variation this would allow? If so, how would one go about doing it? I'd like to see how it compares to the observed variation.

Let's say you compare 20 samples from Pop A with 20 samples from Pop B and the FST result is 0.1000. If you then compare any 10 samples from Pop A with the 20 samples from Pop B, the FST will always be lower by a significant amount, say to around 0.0950. Then if you compare the 20 samples from Pop A with any 10 samples from Pop B, the FST will always be higher, say to around 0.1050. If you compare any 10 samples from Pop A with any 10 samples from Pop B the FST result will be very close to 0.1000. Is this a known issue?

Hi, While studying DNA replication in detail I have read that DNA primase forms an RNA primer on the template strand. I understand the need for a primer, but not why an RNA primer is used instead of a DNA primer? Thanks.

I'd like to point out, that my knowledge in biology comes almost entirely from high school, so I hope that my question can be answered without getting too technical. As far as I understand mechanisms of sexual reproduction, it is dependent on chromosomes, which go by pair. Female reproductive cells have half of them and male the other half. However since there are examples of species that have different number of chromosomes and yet share a common ancestor, how does then the creation of a new chromosome work? I understand, that evolution is a long and continuous process, so you can't pinpoint the first member of a new species, but when it comes to something like the n…

Wings on a human? i was thinking, we could graft wings on a human with enough commitment and research... i have accounted for all the weight loss needed, lung and muscle expansions(including the heart), the traebuclae (i think thats how you spell it) the neural mapping (connecting of nerves and waiting for the brain to map that limb), the energy requirements,skin engineered to be able to accept feathers, etc etc. but i need more info on what would be required as it would be extremly difficult to make an enzyme and a restriction enzyme to do all of this. it would take many years of perseverance and hardship, the personal ethics problem wouldn't help and it would requi…

Hi everyone, I'm yet another writer looking for science help. I have scientists doing 'something' with the PTL and PDK4 genes and they need to mess it up and have to start the project from scratch again. What could be such a big mess up? I don't think it matters but they are looking more efficient ATP metabolism. Any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

"We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/…

I haven't used the NCBI site for years and I'm having difficulty finding gene sequences so that I can put the genomic and cDNA entries into SPLIGN. I have to find the sequence from gene symbols and/or names that I have, then I hope to find these in another species. I repeatedly find no similarity, I must be doing something stupid and probably obvious! I need genomic and cDNA sequences for genes of interest. I start by typing in the gene symbol or name to search in all databases, and then click on nucleotide entries. When I then BLAST these entires against the species I want to find that gene in, I get no results even though the species has it's entire genome sequenced…