National Geographic Deep Jungle The Beast Within. Watch History Channel UFO - Ancient Aliens The Mission online - Watch Movies Online, Full Movies. Strange biology. Watch Wildboyz online (TV Show) - download Wildboyz - Watch TV Online, Free TV. Endangered Species & Biodiversity. Scientist: Humans Strange, Neanderthals Normal. Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out. "What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St.
Louis, told LiveScience today. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Homo, we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core. " Humans are not at the inevitable end of a sequence, Trinkaus said. "It just happens that we happen to be alive today and Neanderthals are not. " Trinkaus spent decades examining fossil skeletons and over time realized that maybe researchers looked at Neanderthals the wrong way. "I wanted to see to what extent Neanderthals are derived, that is distinct, from the ancestral form. Strange biology. Genes: The Instruction Manuals for Life. A gene is a how-to book for making one product—a protein. Proteins perform most life functions, and make up almost all cellular structures. Genes control everything from hair color to blood sugar by telling cells which proteins to make, how much, when, and where. Genes exist in most cells.
Inside a cell is a long strand of the chemical DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). A DNA sequence is a specific lineup of chemical base pairs along its strand. The part of DNA that determines what protein to produce and when, is called a gene. Inside genes The term gene, first created by Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen in 1909, comes from the Greek word for origin, genos. The number of genes in an organism's complete set of DNA, called a genome, varies from species to species.
Each gene has many parts. Each gene helps determine different characteristics of an individual, such as nose shape. Peas in a pod Individuals have two copies of each gene, one inherited from each parent. More to it Related Stories.