Discover magazine picks WSU research for top 100 list.
Environmental toxins affect breeding behavior
Dr. Skinner and research associate Matthew D. Anway collaborated with researchers at the University of Texas at Austin on a study showing that one-time exposure to an environmental toxin can affect the breeding behavior of the exposed animal’s descendants. In their experiments, male rats whose great-grandmothers had been exposed to an environmental toxin when they were embryos were much less attractive to female rats than males whose ancestors were toxin-free.
Dr. Skinner said the findings are significant because sexual selection, or how animals choose their mates, is a major determinant of evolutionary change.
“This is one of the first experimental studies to support a role for epigenetics in evolutionary biology,” he said. “We showed that epigenetic changes can modify sexual selection in such a way as to influence the evolution of a species.”
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science in March.
DNA research suggests humans arrived later in North America
Discover’s top 100 list also featured Dr. Kemp’s research, which produced the oldest sample of human genetic material from the American continents ever examined. Working with David Glenn Smith and other colleagues at the University of California, Davis, Dr. Kemp extracted DNA from a 10,300 year-old human tooth.
The findings, published last January in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, support the hypothesis that humans arrived in North America later than previously thought and then migrated south along the Pacific coast.
The tooth was found in 1996 in On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska.
The study of ancient DNA can open doors to discoveries not possible by studying only modern Native American DNA, Dr. Kemp said. “With the evidence from On Your Knees Cave and a handful of other recent studies, it is evident now that studying genetic variation solely in extant Native American populations will not be as informative about deep prehistory as has been previously assumed.”
Discover magazine’s 2007 list of top science stories
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