Using just four hairs and a few small fragments of bone from an ancient man discovered in the permafrost of western Greenland, a research team from the University of Copenhagen have sequenced about 80% of the ancient man's genome. 

As published in Nature's advanced online edition yesterday, researchers from the Beijing Genomics Institute have successfully completed the sequencing and initial analyses of a draft version of the giant panda genome. One surprising discovery is that the Chinese bear lacks any recognizable genes required for digesting its staple food, bamboo.

The Genetics and Public Policy Center (GPPC) was established by Johns Hopkins University by PEW charitable trusts. Originally published in The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 85, the GPPC conducted a survey of over 4500 individuals pertaining to views on Privacy in Genetics and Participation in Biobank research.

From the Salk Institute

LA JOLLA, CA-When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver-the body's metabolic clearinghouse-is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.

On November 21, 2009 the sections of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) related to employment will go into effect. GINA was signed into law on May 21, 2008 by former president George Bush.

An international team of researchers has decoded the genome of the domestic horse Equus caballus, revealing a genome structure with remarkable similarities to humans and more than one million genetic differences across a variety of horse breeds.

NC State University researchers have recently discovered a genetic "switch" that makes fruit files more tolerant to alcohol. The team measured the time it takes for flies to stagger due to alcohol intake, while simultaneously identifying changes in the expression of their genes.

University of Dublin researchers David Knowles and Aoife McLysaght, of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, have identified three uniquely human genes that are not found in any other species.

Last year, after a published paper identified security holes in the way DNA data is made publicly available, health institutes in the US and around the world removed all genetic data from public access - fearing that private genetic information could be negatively used against individuals who donated their sequence data through genetic studies.

UCSF researcher, Dr. Ying-Hui Fu, and her team have discovered the first gene involved in regulating the optimal length of human sleep.

“Short term and chronic disruptions in the length of optimal sleep can have serious consequences on cognition, mood and physical health, including cancer and endocrine function,” says Dr. Fu, UCSF professor of neurology.