Ethanol: why?

Over the Christmas holiday, quite a few of us will consume ethanol-containing products. This simple, two-carbon molecule is a potent (and legal) mood-altering drug that is woven into the fabric of European and many other cultures since time immemorial. Ethanol has been part of the furniture of human civilization since enterprising farmers discovered it in rotten fruit. It is only fitting that it features prominently at Christmas, a winter feast of excess.

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3rd genome of Christmas: the Denisovan little finger

In the early 90s Svante Paabo, a charismatic, energetic innovator, made a bold proposal: that to study human origins one would do well to sequence the DNA of ancient hominids, in particular those species which had gone extinct. After all, DNA could be detected in their bones, provided they were not too old and kept dry and cold.

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