American - Writer | -
The hippocampus helps record both types of memories initially, and it helps retain them for the medium term. The hippocampus also helps us access old personal memories in long-term storage in other parts of the brain.
Sam Kean
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Most organisms have loads of junk DNA - less pejoratively, noncoding DNA - cluttering their cells.
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Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex - pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51.
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The inability to trace DNA to actual diseases has serious consequences. As does the opposite problem - not being able to trace diseases back to DNA.
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Even if we never cure a single disease, the Human Genome Project and other ventures will have been worth it.
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The most profound change that genetics brings about might not be scientific at all. It might be mental and even spiritual enrichment: a more expansive sense of who we humans are, existentially, and where we came from, and how we fit with other life on earth.
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While our amplified knowledge of genetics - and the increasing precision of the field - does make it tempting to take on celebrity cases, retro-genetics can't always provide clear answers.
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The mutated Marfan gene creates a defective version of fibrillin, a protein that provides structural support for soft tissues like blood vessels. Marfan victims often die young, in fact, after their aortas grow threadbare and rupture.
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It's often meaningless to talk about a genetic trait without also discussing the environment in which that trait appears. Sometimes, genes don't work at all until the environment awakens them.
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Except for certain moments - when cells are dividing, for instance - chromosomes don't form compact, countable bodies inside cells. Instead, they unravel and flop about, which makes counting chromosomes a bit like counting strands of ramen in a bowl.
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Junk DNA - or, as scientists call it nowadays, noncoding DNA - remains a mystery: No one knows how much of it is essential for life.
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Mutations can arise anywhere in the genome, in gene DNA and noncoding DNA alike. But mutations to genes have bigger consequences: They can disable proteins and kill a creature.
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