"Beer goggles" effect explained

Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder. A formula built by researchers at the University of Manchester, UK, spits out a score ranking the drinkers' (mis)perception of beauty. The calculation factors in not only the the amount of booze consumed, but also the light conditions, the amount of smoke in the room, visual acuity, and distance from the person of interest.

BBC News online article

Selection in murid noncoding DNA

In the November issue of PLoS Genetics Gaffney & Keightley present results from their in silico examination of the rat and mouse genomes. They find selection to be acting three times more (in absolute number of sites) in noncoding than in coding sites. Most of these constrained noncoding sites are found more than 5kb away from known protein-coding genes. Intron sites believed to be functionally important are observed to be more concentrated near the 5'-end of genes, providing more evidence for a role of such intron parts in gene regulation. Intergenic regions appear to be harboring twice the number of deleterious mutations found in genes.

Gaffney DJ, Keightley PD. (2006) Genomic selective constraints in murid noncoding DNA. PLoS Genetics 2(11):e204.

Supergene controls color in buterflies

In the October issue of PLoS Biology Joron et al. report that a "supergene" locus controls color patterning in three Heliconius butterfly species.

Joron et al. (2006) A conserved supergene locus controls colour pattern diversity in Heliconius butterflies. PLoS Biology 4(10):e303.

Comparing alignments

AliComp [webserver] - compares two DNA or aminoacid alignments.

SOAP [Java cross-platform program] - compares multiple alignments to the user-defined reference alignment in order to identify unstable (i.e. unreliable) characters.