Genomics Aotearoa

Does exercise change your DNA?

Peter Dearden • Feb 03, 2015

Peter K. Dearden   Last week, on Facebook, an interesting article from the New York Times was being shared. The headline read “How Exercise Changes Our DNA”, and, despite the provocative title, the article underneath was pretty good.  The article explains how a recent published experiment showed that exercise changes some aspects of our DNA. To uncover what … Read More

Defining Genetic Modification.

Peter Dearden • Aug 05, 2014

Peter K. Dearden I have been doing a lot of travelling recently, and have become increasingly perplexed by the term ‘electronic device’ and what to do with them on planes. Some say turn off all your devices; does that mean heart pace makers, insulin pumps, and calculator watches? Some say you can have small ones on and others off. All … Read More

Sex and inbreeding (in bees).

Peter Dearden • Jun 24, 2014

Peter K Dearden Tomorrow I am speaking at the National Bee Keepers Association conference in Whanganui and thought I might write a bit about what we have been doing to help me get things clear. Much of my research work is on bees; trying to learn how they work, trying to find new ways to protect them and, occasionally doing … Read More

Two legs better than four

Peter Dearden • May 13, 2014

Peter K. Dearden Perspective is an important thing in understanding science. I, like everyone else on earth should, have an interest in the evolution of our species. I am struck by the conundrum that we seem very different from our nearest relatives, yet genetically we are very similar. I bet a lot of that is about perspective. It is easy … Read More

Meeting your heroes.

Peter Dearden • Mar 12, 2014

They* say that you shouldn’t meet your heroes. Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet one of mine, Professor Lord Robert Winston, as he came to visit Genetics Otago for the day. Prof. Winston, as well as being a pioneer in science communication, is also a key figure in genetics, being part of the team that invented the technique … Read More

Why you should care about plasticity.

Peter Dearden • Feb 26, 2014

Peter K. Dearden In my last post I mentioned I was interested in how you get changes in the shape of an animal without a change in genetics. This process is, of course, important for animals like bees, but it is also important in our own biology. In recent years evidence has been building that suggests that our early life … Read More

Why I study Bees.

Peter Dearden • Jan 13, 2014

Peter K. Dearden I was recently asked why I work on honeybees, especially given my growing intolerance to bee stings. There are lots of easy answers to this questions, including how cool they are, how important they are, how remarkable their biology is etc etc, but when it comes down to it, there is a real answer. So just to … Read More