Scientists have studied the heritability of dog ownership using information from 35,035 twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry. The new study suggests that genetic variation explains more than half of the variation in dog ownership, implying that the choice of getting a dog is heavily influenced by an individual's genetic make-up.

Researchers have found that opsin 3 -- a protein closely related to rhodopsin, the protein that enables low-light vision -- has a role in adjusting the amount of pigment produced in human skin, a determinant of skin color.

Fainting is not solely caused by external factors. Your genes also play a part. In a study looking at data from more than 400,000 individuals, scientists have identified the first gene that predisposes to fainting.

The Lipidomics Excellence Award (LEA) was founded to strengthen life sciences through lipidomics. After reviewing the many high-quality submitted projects, the LEA jury has announced the three awardees.

Dr Evangelia Petsalaki is a Group Leader at the European Bioinformatics Group, where her research team study human cell signaling in health and disease conditions. Collaborating with teams specializing in MS, imaging and cell biology, their aim is to make both predictive and conditional models so they can anticipate what might happen in a biological network under different conditions.

Deciphering the first complete sequence of the human genome in 2003 required a combined effort of scientists from 20 institutions and $3 billion of funding. Over the last decade, whole-exome sequencing (WES) established itself as a method that successfully balances cost and the output of useful data for diagnostic or research applications. Here, we look at how WES is used in both the laboratory and the clinic, and why it is a preferred method of choice in such areas.

Kicking off "The Evolution of Proteomics" series is a pioneer of proteomics, Professor Ruedi Aebersold. Aebersold's research in quantitative proteomics has helped shape our understanding of how proteins function, interact and are localized in both normal and diseased states.

Sustainability is a hot topic as the world’s population continues to rise, bringing with it a demand for increased food production. This article takes a look at the Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation (Agri-EPI) Centre that was set up by the UK government as part of the Industrial Challenge Strategy, to innovate technology in agriculture.

Any organism is a by-product of both its genetic makeup and the environment. To understand this in detail, we must first appreciate some basic genetic vocabulary and concepts. Here, we provide definitions for the terms genotype and phenotype, discuss their relationship and take a look at why and how we might choose to study them.