Latest Cynthia Beall Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A shared biological adaptation enables highlanders in both Tibet and Ethiopia to thrive in the low oxygen of high altitudes. A new study from Case Western Reserve University reveals that the ability to pass on this trait, however, appears to be linked to different genes in the two groups. The shared adaptation is the ability to maintain relatively low levels of hemoglobin for high altitudes. Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying protein...

A new study pinpoints the genetic changes that enable Tibetans to thrive at altitudes where others get sick.In the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team has identified a gene that allows Tibetans to live and work more than two miles above sea level without getting altitude sickness.A previous study published May 13 in Science reported that Tibetans are genetically adapted to high altitude. Now, less than a month later, a second study by...