Actress Glenn Close Has Genome Mapped
Glenn Close has played a manipulative aristocrat, a Dalmatian-skinning mastermind and is now best known as a high-stakes litigator. She writes a blog about celebrity dogs, is on her third marriage and roots for the New York Mets.That's probably more than you'd care to know about Glenn Close, but scientists now know a whole lot more than that: The actress has become the first identified woman to have her entire genomic sequence decoded.
Close's genome shared a 95 percent similarity with genomes that have already been fully mapped. It also offered up 379,000 new DNA variations, called SNPs, for researchers to analyze.
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The early history of Island Southeast Asia is often characterized as the story of two major population dispersals: the initial Paleolithic colonization of Sahul ~45 thousand years ago and the much later Neolithic expansion of Austronesian-speaking farmers ~4,000 years ago. Here, in the largest survey of Indonesian Y chromosomes to date, we present evidence for multiple genetic strata that likely arose through a series of distinct migratory processes. We genotype an extensive battery of Y chromosome markers, including 85 SNPs/indels and 12 Y-STRs, in a sample of 1,917 men from 32 communities located across Indonesia. 
The Lemba people are easy to distinguish from most other Zimbabweans - they wear skull caps, pray in a language which is a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, and put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Ancient DNA (aDNA) was extracted from the human remains of seventy-three individuals from the Tommy and Mine Canyon sites (dated to PI-II and PIII, respectively), located on the B-Square Ranch in the Middle San Juan region of New Mexico. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups of 48 (65.7%) of these samples were identified, and their frequency distributions were compared with those of other prehistoric and modern populations from the Greater Southwest and Mexico.
In order to better characterize and understand the mtDNA population genetics of Central Asia, the mtDNA control regions of over 1,500 individuals from Uzbekistan have been sequenced. Although all samples were obtained from individuals residing in Uzbekistan, individuals with direct ancestry from neighboring Central Asian countries are included. 
DNA testing has identified the remains of a South Korean soldier believed to be killed during the Korean War, only the third such case using DNA results in South Korea, the defense ministry said Thursday.
Scientists said Wednesday they had sequenced the genome of Bushmen, the longest-surviving lineage of modern humans, expanding our understanding of genetic diversity and inherited disease.
From September 2007 to October 2009, royal mummies underwent detailed anthropological, radiological, and genetic studies (DNA was extracted from 2 to 4 different biopsies per mummy). In addition to Tutankhamun, 10 mummies (circa 1410-1324 B.C.) possibly or definitely closely related in some way to Tutankhamun were chosen; of these, the identities were certain for only 3. In addition to these 11 mummies, 5 other royal individuals dating to the early New Kingdom (circa 1550-1479 B.C.) were selected that were distinct from the supposed members of the Tutankhamun lineage.
The putative skull of Saint Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden that has been kept in a shrine in Vadstena Abbey is probably not authentic. A new study conducted at Uppsala University reveals that the two skulls, believed to be from Saint Bridget and her daughter Catherine (Katarina), are not from maternally related individuals. Furthermore, dating shows that the skulls are not from the time period when Bridget and Catherine lived.
If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Connecticut. Over the past 4 years those beads have been gathering tiny fragments of DNA from samples of dissolved organic materials, including pieces of Neanderthal bone. Genetic sequences have given paleoanthropologists a new line of evidence for testing ideas about the biology of our closest extinct relative.
A 4,000-year-old Greenland man just entered the scientific debate over the origins of prehistoric populations in the Americas.
The father of evolution Charles Darwin was a direct descendant of the Cro-Magnon people, whose entry into Europe 30,000 years ago heralded the demise of Neanderthals, scientists revealed in Australia Thursday.
More people are now looking up their family trees, eager to learn more about their ancestors. But, in a surprising twist, scientists are using family trees to track disease-causing genes.
A team of researchers announced a surprising discovery during a scholarly presentation in Toronto last Friday. The research team, based at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, has been helping to excavate an ancient Roman cemetery at the site of Vagnari in southern Italy. Led by Professor Tracy Prowse, they’ve been analyzing the skeletons found there by performing DNA and oxygen isotope tests.
One of the great remaining mysteries of ancient Egypt, the lineage of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, may soon be solved, the country's antiquities supremo hinted on Sunday.
A new study from the University of Leicester has found that most men in Europe descend from the first farmers who migrated from the Near East 10,000 years ago. The findings are published January 19 in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.
The DNA of a 1st century shrouded man found in a tomb on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem has revealed the earliest proven case of leprosy.
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