genomeboy.com

ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2010) — Just because you don’t swallow the worm at the bottom of a bottle of mescal doesn’t mean you have avoided the essential worminess of the potent Mexican liquor, according to scientists from the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO) at the University of Guelph.

They have discovered that the liquid itself contains the DNA of the agave butterfly caterpillar — the famously tasty mescal “worm.”

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“Showing that the DNA of a preserved specimen can be extracted from the preservative liquid introduces a range of important possibilities,” said Dr. Mehrdad Hajibaebi, a member of the research team. “We can develop inexpensive, high-throughput and non-invasive genetic analysis protocols for situations where the original tissue cannot be touched or when there is simply no sample left for analysis.”

Jerry Dodgson, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Michigan State University, remarked: “The time is right to sequence the turkey genome. The sequence of the chicken genome is known and continues to be refined. The scientific community has established many of the experimental resources that make this project feasible.” He added: “Pyrosequencing on the Roche GS-FLX platform and assembly of the sequence using the publicly available chicken sequence as a reference represents a very cost-effective approach to deliver the turkey genome sequence rapidly to the wider scientific community.”

Something else to be thankful for while you’re high on tryptophan and watching bad football.

Slate says to quit slagging your Mama’s uterus:

It’s easier—for parents, doctors, educators—to say an obese toddler has a slow metabolism than to teach the family better eating and exercise habits. Since 1970, childhood obesity rates have quadrupled. If fetal programming mattered a lot, adult obesity increases would lag years behind. But they don’t. According to intelligence researcher James Flynn, the average IQ of the first wave of professional Asian-American immigrants was almost 10 points lower than that of white professionals; within one generation, the gap closed, suggesting that genes don’t shackle the mind. As Malcolm Gladwell points out: “There should be no great mystery about Asian achievement. It has to do with hard work and dedication to higher education.”

What could be more adaptive than this?

Dubbed ‘Gastrosexuals’ this new generation of men consider cooking more a hobby than a household chore and use their kitchen prowess to impress friends and prospective partners.

Men having the ability to cook is also now a key factor in attracting women along with salary, status, personality and appearance, according to new research.

I used to hate to cook. Now I find it gives me immense pleasure, though my daughters are not always enamored of my efforts.

For example, I think my fusion chicken is to die for. But you have to like cilantro and some folks are not genomically wired that way. You know who you are.