"By dabbing larvae with methoprene, a chemical that mimics juvenile hormone, Abouheif and his team could induce supersoldiers in species that normally lack them."

A finger from the Pangboche Hand was at the Hunterian, and is human. "It's very similar to existing human sequences from China and that region of Asia but we don't have enough resolution to be confident of a racial identification."

"Within the synthesized genome, Venter and colleagues [added] DNA sequences whose string of bases spell out messages. The first watermark includes a code with which to decipher the others, including the names of the contributing scientists, three famous quotes, and an email address. 'If people can decipher the code, they can send an email to us,' said Venter."

"Rolshausen thinks that the crucial factor was human altruism - by giving food to wintering birds, we also gave an advantage to any individuals with mutations that sent them in an unorthodox direction."

"Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another."

"Wingless fruit flies are a natural genetic variation of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. They will remain wingless as long as they are kept in plugged containers and only allowed to breed with other wingless fruit flies. [...] The fruit flies are easily sprinkled into the traps for quick, natural feeding."

"[To] re-create the thylacine [would] take years and be would be extremely costly, not to mention that at some point, a chimeric animal (part-mouse, part-thylacine) would be unlikely to survive."

"Mice fear cats because they are innately conditioned to fear when sensing the odour of the predators. So by getting rid of the specific receptors for sensing the odour, mice never feel afraid of cats."

"Chotai claims that his findings show that season of birth affects basic personality characteristics by influencing the expression or activity of genes that modulate the neurotransmitters for mood."

Incoherent, joke-free, dysgenic, Lamarckian nonsense. An intelligent film sneering at stupid working-class low-brow-culture America would be annoying enough, but a stupid low-brow-culture film doing it is just bafflingly, foot-shootingly pointless.

The parthenogenetic reproduction of a komodo dragon at Chester Zoo. "We were blown away when we realised what she'd done. [...] But we certainly won't be naming any of the hatchlings Jesus."

A Dawkins-inspired prog rock album. "This is what this album is about. Understanding where we come from, who we are related to and how this vast, complex gene machine works does not make us less human or special."

"But could the apparent rise in the prevalence of autism also in part be the result of assortative mating of two strong systemizers?"

"In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome."

Enthusiastically muddled article about the genetic fallout of nuclear war, from 1953. "Will a new race, spawned out of the hellish radiation of a world-wide Atomic War, go on to challenge mankind's supremacy on Earth?"

"One provocative hypothesis that might account for the rise of [autistic] spectrum disorders in technically adept communities like Silicon Valley, some geneticists speculate, is an increase in assortative mating."

"The twin brother of Polish President Lech Kaczynski has accepted the governing party's nomination to be the country's prime minister [making] the Kaczynski brothers the world's only twins to hold the two highest posts in any country."

"Either female komodo dragons are spermthecal, meaning that they have the ability to store sperm or fertilised eggs for long periods, in this case for two years, or they are parthogenetic, [...] they produce clones of themselves."

"[Zombie bacteria] could slowly poison the mitochondria [and] then take over their function once respiration stopped. If it invaded already-dead tissue, its job would be even easier because there'd be no immune system to fight off the infection."

A brilliantly wide-ranging look at the life cycles of dozens of parasites, the effects they have on their hosts, and the historical rise of parasitology from initially dismissive degeneracy theories. Very worldview-changing.

"Mining the information would require building a database of at least 40,000 surnames and the Y chromosome profiles associated with them."

"The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents." Probably not in those exact words.

"Governments and society have not woken up to how DNA testing and genetic profiling are lifting the lid on a 'Pandora's box' of hidden sexual behaviour or how the results might affect individuals, family relationships or public health."

Odd; I was expecting this to be a ludicrous far-future nonsense, but for the most part it's a near-focus logical-conclusion thing, a look at employment and police work in a society where DNA can be easily and cheaply scanned, against a national database.

"This 'huge deletion' of 247 base pairs in the gene that codes for the T1R2 protein – one of two proteins that make up the sweet taste receptor in mammals – has left cats unable to detect sweet-tasting compounds like sugars and carbohydrates."

"After 15,000 years of human cultivation, the banana is too perfect, lacking the genetic diversity that is key to species health. What can ail one banana can ail all."

"Hurlbut advocates genetically altering cloned embryos so, like a teratoma, they wouldn't have the DNA necessary to become viable humans. [...] You could grow them in vats, kill them at will, and never risk offending God."

"Every embryo is unique and genetically complete, like every other human being. [...] These lives are not raw material to be exploited, but gifts." FROM GOD. Beginning to slightly regret tuning my brain in to dog-whistle political frequencies.

"How would we begin? First, we would secure funds to obtain a large supply of identical functioning radios in order to dissect and compare them to the one that is broken."

Michael Pollan interview; the tentacles of GM corn in America. "If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the carbon in it - and what we eat is mostly carbon - comes from corn."

Using household products and a blender. "If you can't find tenderizer, try using pineapple juice or contact lens cleaning solution."

"The reverse of the stamp carries a message thanking users for taking part in the experiment although users are unaware of what this means until they lick the stamp and coloured dye is transferred to the tongue."

Using genetically-engineered cress to detect landmines; tweaked to turn prematurely red when it soaks excessive heavy metals of NO2 from the soil.

Surreal: "I was invited on to Richard and Judy, a daytime TV talk show popular in Britain, to discuss LB1, and I shared the comfy sofa with Dawkins, who made a plea that the find should not be called a hobbit."

Vague genetic basis for being brilliant at breakfast. "We found most of the extreme morning preference people have the longer gene and the extreme evening preference people have the short gene." They're still taking swabs at the Science Museum.

"A British businessman was jailed on Friday for making up the results of more than 100 paternity tests after his lucrative DNA analysis business became swamped with work."

Genetically-similar imported ant colonies merge to form a single, giant ant utopia, instead of fighting each other like they're supposed to.

Mutation at the information level. "A default date conversion feature in Excel was altering gene names that it considered to look like dates."

"A New York University team created the robot using DNA legs that move along a footpath, which is also based on DNA."

"Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be."

Strange ASCII-art genetic-insect social software. Any spare eggs out there?

"keep the race PURE BLUE and RED"