This article, on a project to sequence the cocoa genome, attracted my immediate attention. Anything that protects the supply of chocolate has my full support.
And, speaking of genomes, this article about how ours change during our lifetimes reminded me of a podcast I listened to recently.
The BBC's In Our Time show recently did a segment of the Soviet science charlatan Trofim Lysenko, who led the country down a weird path that denied emerging genetic science and Darwinian evolution. He basically argued that plants could inherited from their environments and therefore could be, in a manner, trained to grow in difficult conditions - that their capabilities are not determined by their DNA. What's interesting about this podcast is that it, in part, argues that he was not totally wrong.
More recent research has shown that the environment can affect your genome and that these effects can be passed on through generations. So, Lysenko was only 99% wrong.
In other news:
The centre for adventure is in your brain
Sit near the front of the plane
Now there's a hormone for it:
Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to
- The Smiths
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