Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
In an alarming new research study, researchers have stated that lung cancer mortality rates among women could increase by 43 per cent by 2030. The findings are according to an analysis of data from 52 countries. The global age-standardized breast cancer mortality rate is projected to decrease by 9 percent …
The unique ornamental features and extreme sexual traits of Peacock have always intrigued the scientists. However, the genomic evidence to explain its phenotype are yet unknown. Thus, we report the first genome sequence and comparative analysis of peacock with the available high-quality genomes of chicken, turkey, duck, flycatcher and zebra …
Fungi have recently been found to comprise a significant part of the deep biosphere in oceanic sediments and crustal rocks. Fossils occupying fractures and pores in Phanerozoic volcanics indicate that this habitat is at least 400 million years old, but its origin may be considerably older. A 2.4-billion-year-old basalt from …
Lignin, one of the most abundant biopolymers on Earth, derives from the plant phenolic metabolism. It appeared upon terrestrialization and is thought critical for plant colonization of land. Early diverging land plants do not form lignin, but already have elements of its biosynthetic machinery. Here we delete in a moss …
Hyoliths are abundant and globally distributed ‘shelly’ fossils that appear early in the Cambrian period and can be found throughout the 280 million year span of Palaeozoic strata. The ecological and evolutionary importance of this group has remained unresolved, largely because of their poorly constrained soft anatomy and idiosyncratic scleritome, …
Here we report the Simons Genome Diversity Project data set: high quality genomes from 300 individuals from 142 diverse populations. These genomes include at least 5.8 million base pairs that are not present in the human reference genome. Our analysis reveals key features of the landscape of human genome variation, …
Stromatolite fossils formed around 3,700 million years ago in what is now Greenland predate the previous oldest fossil evidence for life on Earth by more than 200 million years.
Comparative phylogeography of African savannah mammals shows a congruent pattern in which populations in West/Central Africa are distinct from populations in East/Southern Africa. However, for the lion, all African populations are currently classified as a single subspecies (Panthera leo leo), while the only remaining population in Asia is considered to …
The health of cloned animals generated by somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) has been of concern since its inception; however, there are no detailed assessments of late-onset, non-communicable diseases. Here we report that SCNT has no obvious detrimental long-term health effects in a cohort of 13 cloned sheep. We perform musculoskeletal …
A high-resolution gene expression atlas of prenatal and postnatal brain development of rhesus monkey charts global transcriptional dynamics in relation to brain maturation, while comparative analysis reveals human-specific gene trajectories; candidate risk genes associated with human neurodevelopmental disorders tend to be co-expressed in disease-specific patterns in the developing monkey neocortex.
Implantation of the blastocyst is a developmental milestone in mammalian embryonic development. At this time, a coordinated program of lineage diversification, cell-fate specification, and morphogenetic movements establishes the generation of extra-embryonic tissues and the embryo proper, and determines the conditions for successful pregnancy and gastrulation. Despite its basic and clinical …
Remodelling of the human embryo at implantation is indispensable for successful pregnancy. Yet it has remained mysterious because of the experimental hurdles that beset the study of this developmental phase. Here, we establish an in vitro system to culture human embryos through implantation stages in the absence of maternal tissues …
New excavations in Liang Bua, where the remains of the ‘Hobbit’ (Homo floresiensis) were discovered, show that this diminutive human species used this cave between 190,000 and 50,000 years ago, and not until as recently as 12,000 years ago as previously interpreted; modern humans have been present in Australia since …
The genetic underpinnings associated with the earliest stages of plant and animal domestication have remained elusive. Because a genome-wide response to selection can take many generations, the earliest detectable changes associated with domestication may first manifest as heritable changes to global patterns of gene expression. Here, to test this hypothesis, …
This paper presents the first Indo-French Prehistorical Mission in the Himalayan foothills, northwestern India, and introduces the results of the multidisciplinary research program “Siwaliks” under the patronage of Professor Yves Coppens, from the Collège de France and Académie des Sciences, France. This program is dedicated to the discovery of cut …
The contribution of rare and low-frequency variants to human traits is largely unexplored. Here we describe insights from sequencing whole genomes (low read depth, 7×) or exomes (high read depth, 80×) of nearly 10,000 individuals from population-based and disease collections. In extensively phenotyped cohorts we characterize over 24 million novel …
Structural variants are implicated in numerous diseases and make up the majority of varying nucleotides among human genomes. Here we describe an integrated set of eight structural variant classes comprising both balanced and unbalanced variants, which we constructed using short-read DNA sequencing data and statistically phased onto haplotype blocks in …
Przewalski’s horses (PHs, Equus ferus ssp. przewalskii) were discovered in the Asian steppes in the 1870s and represent the last remaining true wild horses. PHs became extinct in the wild in the 1960s but survived in captivity, thanks to major conservation efforts. The current population is still endangered, with just …
The genes that control the response of the human immune system vary enormously between individuals. Understanding the evolution of these genetic differences and how they individualize immune responses is central to understanding how the immune system works in health and disease. In this regard, the KhoeSan of southern Africa are …
