The science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms.
Questions tagged [genetics]
73 questions
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Are Ashkenazi Jews genetically more European than Semitic?
Referring to this article Surprise: Ashkenazi Jews Are Genetically European.
But a new study suggests that at least their (Ashkenazi Jews) maternal lineage may
derive largely from Europe.
Though the finding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the…
Graviton
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Can phobias be genetic, but created in one generation and not by natural selection?
I have seen this article floating around.
Pretty much they state that if a parent is traumatized, the child could be born with a phobia.
Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta,
found that mice can pass on learned…
Andrey
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Did BGI genetically test Uyghurs in Xinjiang?
In July of last year the U.S. Commerce Department publicly accused subsidiaries of BGI (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute) of genetically testing Uyghurs in Xinjiang as part of a campaign of ethnically-motivated political repression:
The entities…
Matthew Muñoz
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Is an egalitarian inclination largely genetically determined?
A 2017 study titled A Genetic Basis of Economic Egalitarianism
seems to have concluded that:
We use Minnesota Twin Study data from 2008, collected from samples of monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs (n = 573) in order to estimate the additive…
Fizz
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Have more than a million people had their whole genomes sequenced by the end of 2018?
The news article https://www.wired.com/story/whole-genome-sequencing-cost-200-dollars/ (mirror) published on 2018-11-18 claims that
Today, slightly more than a million people have had their whole genomes sequenced.
Aside from the fact that "whole…
Franck Dernoncourt
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Is approximately 80% of a child's intelligence acquired from the mother?
Uberfacts, a Twitter account with 9.43M followers claims that 80% of a child's intelligence is acquired from the mother. How true is this?
Gizmodo doesn't do a very good job of debunking this:
FALSE. This fun fact is a favorite of those who think…
user7920
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Is height about as heritable as obesity?
The Thin Privilege FAQ explains:
Weight is about 50% - 80% heritable (sources disagree, but here’s a study that shows it to be 77% heritable). Height, for comparison, isn’t 100% heritable (I’ve seen it pegged in the 70% - 80% range but I still need…
rlms
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Does speciation occur?
I am not questioning the theory of comment descent, but I am skeptical about the evolutionary mechanisms proposed for speciation.
Have we ever observed in detail how speciation occurs? We can take the easiest example, allopatric speciation, or any…
Gregory Magarshak
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Could the Australian Aborigines have Descended from Three People?
My anthropology professor claimed that certain genetic simulations showed that the Australian Aborigines could have descended from a population of only one man and two women. Those three people and their offspring could have sustained a genetically…
Publius
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Correlation between MAO-A gene and murderers / sex offenders
The MAO-A gene, also known as the "Warrior gene", is thought to cause increased antisocial and violent behavior patterns in people who have experienced an abusive childhood. [ref] Caspi et. al. found similar results.
I also remember an episode of…
Polynomial
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Do the hemoglobin genotypes of a couple affect whether their offspring will get Sickle Cell Disease?
I just read this (currently unanswered) Quora quesion:
What should I do? After seven years in a relationship, I just find out that our genotype is AS.
Since I never heard of this before I googled and found this article about genotypes:
Knowing…
d-b
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Fewer shared immune genes in a couple correlate with (or even cause) more female orgasms?
I found in a psychology blog that
Researchers have found that women who share fewer immune genes with their male partners also report more frequent orgasms (Garver-Apgar et al., 2006).
And the genes the paper is specifically talking about:
the…
Fizz
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Is divorce caused (or influenced by) genetics?
From Independent headline:
Divorce does run in the family and could be genetic, researchers have suggested.
... the study – carried out by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Lund University in Sweden
The study seems to be based on people…
user5341
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Was Zana from a relict hominid population?
Did Zana (a 19th century Russian "ape-woman") belong to a relict hominid population?
In his 2015 book, "The nature of the beast: The first scientific evidence on the survival of apemen into modern times" (on Amazon.com), author Bryan Sykes, Emeritus…
TheMathemagician
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Did Homo sapiens have children with Neanderthals?
One of my friends told me that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals had children together when the homo sapiens came to Europe about 50 000 BC.
But is it possible that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals had children together and bore children with mixed genes…
Ole Petersen
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