A nearly universal feature of intron sequences is that even closely related species exhibit a large number of insertion/deletion differences. The goal of the analysis described here is to test whether the observed pattern of insertion/deletion events in the genealogy of the myosin alkali light chain (Mlc1) gene is consistent with neutrality, and if not, to determine the underlying forces of evo...

The age of an allele can be estimated both from genetic variation among different copies (intra-allelic variation) and from its frequency. Estimates based on intra-allelic variation follow from the exponential decay of linkage disequilibrium because of recombination and mutation. The confidence interval depends both on the uncertainty in recombination and mutation rates and on randomness of the...

Driven by the popularity of television shows such as Who Do You Think You Are? many millions of users have uploaded their family tree to web projects such as WikiTree [1]. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate genealogy computationally. The study of heritage in the social sciences has led to an increased understanding of ancestry and descent [2] but such efforts are hampered by diff...

the law of embryo donatioin declares that legitimacy of the process of in vitro fertilization is dependent upon observation of religious precepts, without specifying those precepts. as it is doctors of medicine who are in charge of that process, the lawmakers should reconsider that law and, while announcing a method which is religiously lawful, determine religious criteria of the process. as so...