Beyond bones & stones
Most associate dark skin with African peoples, but there are a wide variety of populations who represent an even wider array of skin tones, from the light beige skin of the San to the deep black skin of the Dinka. A new study published online this week in Science, identifies a handful of new gene variants responsible... Continue Reading →
Kambiz here. I'm about to start my second term of medical school, which is both exciting and nerve racking. In my summer readings, I came across a medical and anthropological tidbit today that caught my attention: redheads have a lower tolerance for pain. I didn't know that. Did you? Skin pigmentation is one of my favorite topics. We know... Continue Reading →
Earlier this year, I wrote a massive summary on the genetics of pigmentation for one of my graduate courses. I wasn't particularly keen on the topic before but it has since grown on me and I'm now a big fan. So to read from Yann, Dienekes, and Razib that one of the key pigmentation genes,... Continue Reading →
Ever since December, I've been reading a lot of research about the genetics of human skin color variation. To date, many genes have been identified in the skin pigmentation biochemical pathway. This suggests that the evolution of human skin color is multifaceted. Some of the genes you may have heard of before are ASIP, MC1R... Continue Reading →
I know Razib and I are both interested in how skin color is determined. Many different genetic loci have been identified as factors in the skin pigmentation biochemical pathway. It can be a mysterious task, but often all it takes is homology in sequences to clue investigators into considering a new loci as a possible... Continue Reading →
It is not yet 7 a.m. and I've already been flooded with hot new anthropology related publications. There are so many that I don't know where to start. I've got papers on human genetic variation and human genome evolution, comparisons of human versus Neandertal dental development, and the lack of archaeological evidence during mega droughts... Continue Reading →
