“What do a pigeon and a flamingo have in common? Quite a bit, according to a reordering of the evolutionary tree of birds. One of a series of studies published Thursday in Science is the latest step toward understanding the origins of the roughly 10,000 bird species that populate our planet.” View more …
“Stephen Richards, a genomicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who is leading an effort to sequence 28 insect genomes, praises the team’s decision to systematically select bird species so that one from each taxonomic order was represented, rather than picking scientists’ favourite species. ‘It’s a foundational work for the next century of biological …
“New research on the bird genome has revealed that the same genes that give humans the ability to speak give birds the ability to sing. Because of this similarity, researchers will be able to use birds as lab subjects to better understand how speech evolved.” View more …
“It’s not just great minds that think alike. Dozens of the genes involved in the vocal learning that underpins human speech are also active in some songbirds. And knowing this suggests that birds could become a standard model for investigating the genetics of speech production – and speech disorders.” View more …
“Drugs such as heroin and cocaine may owe some of their addictive powers to an ancient instinct—our appetite for salt.” View more …
“Die Lust auf Salz ist ein Urinstinkt. Jetzt haben Forscher herausgefunden, dass er im Gehirn die gleichen Genmuster aktiviert wie die Drogensucht. Derweil streiten Mediziner weiterhin heftig, ob zu viel Salz wirklich krank macht – und ob ein Verzicht tatsächlich vor Herzerkrankungen schützt.” View more …
“AUSTRALIAN and US scientists have proved that the same area of the brain that is activated when the body craves salt ”lights up” in response to cocaine or opium, suggesting addictive drugs have hijacked a pathway of the brain used for instinctive behaviour.” View more …
“Researchers have gained new insights into the brain by decoding the genome of the zebra finch, a songbird whose males learn a single love song from their fathers that they repeat through life.” View more …
“Scientists have created a ‘blueprint’ of the genome of a songbird. The advance, described in the journal Nature, could reveal some of the evolutionary secrets of vocal learning in animals, including humans.” View more …
Neurogenomics Laboratory