Isotope: One of several forms of an element that differ in weight. Isotopes have the same number of protons but differing numbers of neutrons. See also Carbon-14 dating.
Lactase: The digestive enzyme that breaks down lactose. People who lack lactase often suffer gastrointestinal discomfort or worse when they drink fresh milk.
Lactose: A sugar found in milk.
Linkage disequilibrium: Statistical association in a population between nearby genetic variants, ordinarily SNPs. Chromosomes break and recombine over time, so that diversity along a chromosome becomes randomized in a population. Ordinarily, for example, the pattern of SNPs at a chromosomal location predicts little about the pattern 100,000 base positions away. Various evolutionary forces, however, can lead to a correlation over large chromosomal distances, and this is called linkage disequilibrium.
Locus: A particular place on a chromosome. Since humans are diploids, we have two copies of the genetic material at every locus.
Loss of function: Impairment in the functioning of a gene due to a mutation. A mutation of a gene that breaks it or impairs its function is called a loss-of-function mutation. A familiar example is any of several genes that cause light skin color in Europeans. These are essentially broken African genes. We see many loss-of-function mutations in genetics because it is easy to break a gene.
Malthusian trap: A situation in which diminishing returns prevent gains in average welfare in a population because any improvements in technology or production are offset by population increase.
Mitochondrial DNA: Genetic material in organelles in the cell called mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is transmitted in the cytoplasm outside the nucleus; hence it is only transmitted through females. Since any individual has only one inherited copy of mtDNA, the mtDNA system is called a haploid (as opposed to diploid) system. See also Diploid; Haploid.
Mousterian: The culture and tool tradition associated with Neanderthals in Europe and near Asia. It is characterized by sophisticated flake tools made from prepared cores, but it also retains earlier technologies.
Mutation: A change in genetic material. Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic diversity.
Natural selection: The process by which the frequency of alleles in a population is changed by factors other than sampling error. Usually this means that changes in the frequency of an allele are driven by its effects on individual fitness.
Neanderthal: Archaic humans who occupied western Eurasia from several hundred thousand years ago to 35,000 years ago when they went extinct, presumably in competition with anatomically modern humans.
Neolithic: Literally "New Stone Age"; the period beginning with the advent of farming and ending when metal tools became widely used. In the Middle East, it began about 9000 bc and ended about 4500 bc. See also Paleolithic.
Neuron: A nerve cell.
Nucleotide: Chemical compounds that are the structural units of DNA and RNA. They're made up of a unit called a base that is linked to a sugar and one or more phosphate groups. The four bases found in DNA are adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. A chromosome is made of millions of linked nucleotides.
Paleolithic: Literally, "Old Stone Age"; the period beginning over 2 million years ago and represented by the earliest stone-tool traditions from the Oldowan tradition and including the Upper Paleolithic tools made by anatomically modern humans as recently as 10,000 years ago in Europe. The period ended with the advent of farming in around 9000 bc. See also Neolithic.
Parsis: The Zoroastrian community in India, descended (in part) from Persians who left Iran after the Arab conquest.
Pathans: The largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second-largest in Pakistan. Pathans are Muslims, speak an east Iranian language, and follow an elaborate honor code known as Pashtunwali. They are also called Afghans and Pushtuns.
Pleistocene: A geological epoch that began about 1.8 million years ago and, conventionally, ended with the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.
Positive selection: Advantage that occurs when natural selection favors a particular allele, which then increases in frequency.
Primates: The order of mammals that includes prosimians, Old and New World monkeys, apes, and humans.
Protein: One or several chains of amino acids that have undergone complex folding.
Proto-Indo-European: See Indo-European.
Pyramidal neuron: A neuron with a long axon and many dendrites located in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex. Pyramidal neurons constitute approximately 80 percent of cortical neurons.
Recessive: An allele that causes a detectable phenotypic characteristic only when an organism has two copies. Many recessive alleles are null alleles—they do nothing. For example, blood group O of the ABO locus is the absence of a gene product. See also Dominant.
Recombination: The process of chromosomes breaking, exchanging segments, and re-forming. Also called "crossing-over." We inherit one of each pair of chromosomes from each parent. These parental chromosomes break and re-form so that we transmit chromosomes that are composed of some of each parental chromosome.
Sarmatians: Horse nomads who lived in southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans in late antiquity, the successors of the Scythians. They spoke an Iranian language related to the language of the Scythians. See also Alans; Scythians; Vandals.
Scythians: Horse nomads who dominated southern Russia during early classical times and spoke an Iranian language. They were closely related to the Sarmatians, their successors.
Selective sweep: The process by which a new variant favored by selection increases in frequency.
SNP: Single nucleotide polymorphism, a DNA sequence variant in which a single nucleotide differs from others in a collection of chromosomes.
Spanish Fly: Cantharides, a poisonous compound secreted by some beetles. If ingested, it irritates the urinary tract and causes swelling of the genitalia. It was often used as an aphrodisiac (on Louis XIV, for example) or as a poison. Today cantharides is illegal in the United States except in animal husbandry.
Sphingolipids: A class of lipids that are found in cell membranes and common in nerve tissue. They play a role in cell recognition, membrane structure, and signal transmission.
Tay-Sachs disease: A lysosomal storage disease that is unusually common (100 times the norm) in Ashkenazi Jews. Homozygotes undergo aberrant sprouting of dendrites from pyramidal neurons and die in infancy.
Vandals: An East Germanic tribe that invaded the Roman Empire in the fourth century. They passed through France, occupied southern Spain for a time, and later built a robber kingdom centered in North Africa. See also Alans; Sarmatians.
X chromosome: One of the two sex-determining chromosomes in mammals. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, whereas males have an X and a Y chromosome. See also Y chromosome.
Yanomamo: An Amerindian tribe of the Amazon basin that subsists by gardening and hunting. They are famous for high levels of violence
and local raiding and warfare; males who have killed others have higher fitness than nonkillers.
Y chromosome: One of the two sex-determining chromosomes in mammals. Males have one X and one Y chromosome. The Y chromosome triggers male development. Except for mutation, it is passed on unchanged from father to son. See also X chromosome.
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