The authors from Aarhus University in Denmark and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany with PhD student Moisès Coll Macià, BiRC, as first author of the study used Neanderthal fragments scattered in non-African genomes as molecular clocks to estimate generation intervals in Eurasian and American populations.

Doug Speed, together with colleagues from BiRC and NCRR, have recently developed improved methods for predicting complex traits. Their work has this week been published in the journal Nature Communications.

An international team of researchers has put together a new image of Neanderthals based on the genes Neanderthals left in the DNA of modern humans when they had children with them about 50,000 years ago. The researchers found the new pieces of the puzzle by trawling the genomes of more than 27,000 Icelanders.

BiRC member Doug Speed, in collaboration with David Balding and John Holmes (University of Melbourne), has recently developed a new tool that improves our understanding of the genetic factors underlying complex traits. Details of the tool have been published this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

Pan-Cancer Project discovers causes of previously unexplained cancers, pinpoints cancer-causing events and zeroes in on mechanisms of development.

Azoospermia - or the absence of spermatozoa - is one of the causes of infertility, a problem faced by ~15% of couples. Azoospermic testis shows different characteristics and probably causes over different groups of patients.

New single cell sequencing technologies allow the study of a tissue cell by cell, but analysis of such complex and big data is still a developing and debated area.

In this new study, researchers illustrate the potential and challenges in analyzing tissues at a single cell resolution, discussing future clinical applications and disentanglement of the causes and characteristics of azoospermia.

In the face of rapid climate change, it is important that plants can adapt quickly to new conditions to ensure their survival. Using field experiments and plant genome studies, an international research team has pinpointed areas of the genome that are affected during local adaptation to contrasting climates.

A fingerprint, a bloodstain or other biological material are some of the traces the police search for at a crime scene. With the help of the biological traces, a person or perpetrator can be tied to a crime scene. However, until now it has not been technically possible to determine when a fingerprint or other trace was made and thus determine whether it is relevant to the investigation.

Researchers from the Section of Forensic Chemistry and from the Bioinformatics Research Centre at Aarhus University are collaborating with researchers from the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen, as well as the National Forensic Services at the Danish National Police, on the development of an analytical method that clarifies the age of biological traces. The method will potentially determines whether a person or perpetrator was at the scene at the time a crime was committed.

Vores evolution går cirka en tredjedel langsommere end hos de andre primater. I et nyt studie har danske forskere nemlig fundet frem til, at mennesket har langt færre DNA-mutationer, end vores nærmeste nulevende slægtninge: De store menneskeaber.