Ewen Callaway

1 month ago | nature.com | Ewen Callaway

Kei Sato was looking for his next big challenge five years ago when it smacked him — and the world — in the face. The virologist had recently started an independent group at the University of Tokyo and was trying to carve out a niche in the crowded field of HIV research. “I thought, ‘What can I do for the next 20 or 30 years?’”He found an answer in SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, that was rapidly spreading around the world.

1 month ago | nature.com | Ewen Callaway

A company that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to ‘de-extinct’ woolly mammoths and other animals has claimed a breakthrough in its quest: the creation of hairier mice. The gene-edited ‘woolly mice’ harbour a mix of mutations modelled on those of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), as well as changes known to alter hair growth in mice, Colossal Biosciences announced in a 4 March press release and accompanying preprint1.

2 months ago | nature.com | Ewen Callaway

Scientists today released what they say is the biggest-ever artificial-intelligence model for biology. The model — which was trained on 150,000 genomes spanning the tree of life, from humans to single-celled bacteria and archaea — can write whole chromosomes and small genomes from scratch. It can also make sense of existing DNA, including hard-to-interpret ‘non-coding’ gene variants that are linked to disease.

2 months ago | nature.com | Ewen Callaway

Mice carrying a gene variant present in nearly every human on Earth — and not by extinct relatives including Neanderthals — produce more complex chirps than normal rodents1. The finding suggests that the mutation — which changes a protein called NOVA1 that has a role in orchestrating gene activity in the brain — might have contributed to cognitive differences between humans and their closest relatives, and possibly to aspects of complex speech and language.

2 months ago | nature.com | Ewen Callaway

Ancient genomics researchers have pinpointed the homelands of a nomadic tribe that transformed the culture and genetics of Europe and Asia, revealing a potential source for the Indo–European language family, spoken by much of the world. Genomes from more than 400 individuals suggest that the Yamnaya — Bronze Age herders from the steppes of present-day Russia and Ukraine — emerged along the northern shores of the Black Sea. The findings are published on 5 February in Nature1 2.