Questions tagged [genetics]
The science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms.
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Is it true that 3 fingers = 5 fingers? [closed]
I remember reading, aeons ago, in print (I'm old), that 3 fingers (digits) can do all that 5 fingers (digits) can. Is this true?
I suppose someone could make the case that what we consider normal (5 ...
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Can the Bajau people stay underwater for as long as 13 minutes?
National Geographic 4/2018: 'Sea Nomads' Are First Known Humans Genetically Adapted to Diving claims:
But a group of people called the Bajau takes free diving to the extreme, staying underwater for ...
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Did Neanderthals keep Cro-Magnons as sex-slaves?
Some time ago, it was thought that modern people came from Cro-Magnons, and Neanderthals became extinct. But after the Neanderthal genome project, we found that modern people have from 1% to 4% of ...
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Is intelligence declining due to the lack of selection pressure?
I have read lately that human intelligence has already peaked and that it will slowly decline over time because humans are no longer naturally selected for intelligence (Darwin award winners aside). ...
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Are all white cats with blue eyes deaf?
I was told that all pure white cats with both eyes being blue are completely deaf, and that all pure white cats with one blue eye are deaf on the side that has the blue eye.
If the cat has even a ...
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Can Tifton 85 grass produce cyanide gas?
Today I read something quite unexpected:
Preliminary tests revealed the Tifton 85 grass, which has been here for years, had suddenly started producing cyanide gas, poisoning the cattle.
[...]
...
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Is one in two hundred men a descendant of Genghis Khan?
I've read years ago that 8% of all Asian men and thus 0.5% of all men would be descendant of Genghis Khan.
Is there any truth to this? Or was this some trick to get their paper published?
Citation of ...
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Are humans descended from chimp-pig hybrids?
Geneticist Dr. Eugene McCarthy claims that humans have descended from hybrids of pigs and chimpanzees:
A 2013 Phys.Org article explained:
he has amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that ...
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Is reviving an extinct species possible?
With all the science of genetics, and genetic engineering, would reviving an extinct species possible?
Yes, akin the story of "Jurassic Park".
Would it be possible now, with the science we have today?...
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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 ...
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Is dandruff an indicator of an "unhealthy scalp?" Can a shampoo cure the underlying problem?
In this video (sponsored by Head and Shoulders) by Veritasium entitled "What Actually Causes Dandruff?", you can hear Dr. Jim Schwartz a Research Fellow at Head & Shoulders say:
The ...
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Is there more genetic difference between men and women than men and male chimpanzees?
I got into trouble with someone yesterday for poo-pooing this idea as it smelled of apples and oranges to me.
The specific statistic was that genetically there is a 5% difference between men and ...
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Did a 'Black History Month website' call white people ‘genetically defective descendants of albino mutants’?
Telegraph.co.uk reports that 'A Black History Month website' has made claims such as :
[white people are the] genetically defective descendants of albino mutants
[white man can] “fantasise that he ...
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Do humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas?
It's widely claimed that we share 50% of our DNA with bananas. Does this have actual basis or is it a myth?
Example claims The Mirror (UK), NHGRI
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Are crocodiles more closely related to birds than lizards and snakes?
In this video Owl, The Best Pet Reptile? you can hear Clint say,
Crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards and snakes.
Is this claim true?
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Do Jews mostly descend from Shem, son of Noah?
I mean, I am not exactly a creationist.
However, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem
How come we have a race called "semite" as in anti-semite? It's as if people think that those people are descendant ...
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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.
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Are Ashkenazi Jews largely descended from Khazars?
There is an obvious ethnic subdivision within Jews, between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi. In several vaguely antisemitic websites (see for instance, here, here, and here ), but also in a completely ...
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Are Ashkenazi Jews smarter?
I just received an email entitled "Why are Jews So Smart". You can read an article here.
I also found a similar article in New York Magazine.
Did Jewish intelligence evolve in tandem with Jewish ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Is this image of eye colour inheritance accurate?
This image is circulating on social media (e.g. Pinterest).
It implies that if you have green eyes, then you can't possibly have one biological parent with blue eyes and the other with brown.
The ...
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Do only ~2.4% of participants in large-scale genetic studies have African ancestry?
From a February 18 23andMe tweet:
Only about 2.4% of participants included in large-scale genetic studies have African ancestry.
Is this claim true?
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Are Adolf Hitler's DNA samples available?
A recent report published by LePoint claims that a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Loret is Hitler's son. The evidence in favor of this claim cited by the Huffington Post includes:
Hitler and Loret have ...
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Is it possible have a cell fusion by just injecting human sperm to an unfertilized chicken egg?
I stumbled upon these video documentation titled 'Humonculus' in Youtube (I know Youtube is not reliable source, but the video to me looks legit and well video documented) by channel named Planet ...
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Are girls and boys pre-programmed to behave... like girls and boys?
My dad claims that even as toddlers, my sister and I knew which toys to play with. For example, I would always pick up toy guns, Action Man, and other similar toys. She would always pick up Barbie. He ...
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Do humans share 99% of their DNA with rats?
I keep hearing this claim that a lab "rat has 99% of the DNA of a human?" Is that so? What exactly does this mean? One source for this claim seems to CNN which only says,
"About 99 percent of genes ...
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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 ...
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Has increased computer use led to increased myopia?
According to ABC News and this Ophthalmological study there has been a significant increase in the number of people with myopic eyesight over a recent 30 year period. From the ABC article:
There ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Are red heads more likely to be hot headed?
It's a common cliche that red heads are more likely to have a fiery personality.
To quote from Wikipedia:
A common belief about redheads is that they have fiery tempers and
sharp tongues. In ...
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Of all humans ever born, did most men not become fathers?
I quote in full a passage from the book Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men by Roy Baumeister, pages 63 – 64:
Counting Ancestors
Let’s return now to the ...
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Is 8% of human DNA from viruses?
According to 23andme's Twitter
Image reads,
Approximately 8% of DNA is originally from viruses, which infected your ancestors and became integrated into their cells.
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Is Y-chromosomal Adam younger than Mitochondrial Eve?
A Christian claimed to me that: the Y-chromosomal Adam is way younger than the Mitochondrial Eve.
Is this true?
He argued that this was consistent with the biblical account: that Noah is Y-...
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Are new genes created through duplication?
In an creationist article, about molecular virologist, Dr Yingguang Liu, it says:
Evolutionists commonly invoke ‘duplication’ as a way to create brand new genes. A copying error can lead to an ...
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Do the mother's genes almost exclusively determine the sons' intelligence?
According to this paper: Intelligence and the X chromosome by Gillian Turner, published by The Lancet (a highly regarded medical journal) in 1996, the X chromosome is dominantly responsible for coding ...
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Are red-heads going extinct?
There is a widely-held belief that there will no longer be humans with red hair in the future (sometimes cited by 2060 or 2100).
For example, these Facebook groups:
"Save the ginger kids, there ...
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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 ...
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Have scientists successfully cloned a dinosaur?
An article makes a claim that scientists have cloned a baby Apatosaurus.
From Article:
Scientists at Liverpool’s John Moore University have successfully cloned a dinosaur, a spokesman from the ...
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Is 80% of childs intelligence acquired from mother? [duplicate]
Several articles on internet claim that 80% of child's intelligence is acquired from mother. however not providing any scientific publications. Is it really true?
source: http://brooklynmutt.com/post/...
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Ethnoreligions: what religions explicitly claim heritability? [closed]
Several SE/SO questions (e.g., this) address what is often claimed to be (often correctly) confusion between ethnicity and religion. Certainly (IIUC, ICBW) most modern religions tend to be avowedly (...
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Are Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen fraternal twins?
Wikipedia claims that American actors Mary Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen are fraternal twins. They have also both claimed this. Other sources claim the same: Washington Post, St. Petersburg Times, and ...
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Do races/ethnicities have different odors?
This is a serious question and not intended to demean any ethnic group or racial group. I'm Caucasian and have dated Asian (Chinese), black and South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) men. I have noticed ...
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What risks exist with GMO, but not with selective breeding?
Anytime you hear Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) come up, someone always pipes in that it's perfectly safe because we've been doing it for thousands of years through selective breeding. ...
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Does homosexuality preserve the species?
From The Huffington Post:
For even without a causal link established between homosexuality and population management, the obvious reduction in population growth attributable to homosexuality by ...
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Is approximately 80% of a child's intelligence acquired from the mother? [duplicate]
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:
...
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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 ...
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