DNA detectives in Antarctica: probing 6,000 years of penguin poo for clues to the past

Jamie Wood Jamie Wood, University of Adelaide and Theresa Cole, University of AdelaideStudies of ancient DNA have tended to focus on frozen land in the northern hemisphere, where woolly mammoths and bison roamed. Meanwhile, Antarctica has received relatively little attention. We set out to change that. The most suitable sediments are exposed near the coast of the icy continent, where penguins like to breed. Their poo is a rich source of DNA, providing information about the health of the population as well as what penguins have been eating. Our new research opens a window on the past of Adélie penguins in Antarctica, going back 6,000 years. It also offers a surprise glimpse into the shrinking world of southern elephant seals over the past 1,000 years. Understanding how these species coped with climate change in the past can help us prepare for the future. Wildlife in Antarctica faces multiple emerging threats and will likely need support to cope with the many challenges ahead. A unique marine ecosystem Adélie penguins are particularly sensitive to changes in their environment. This makes them what we call a “sentinel species”, providing an early warning of imbalance or dysfunction in the coastal ecosystem. Their poo also provides a record of how they responded to changes in the past. In our new research, we excavated...

Read More........→March 11, 2025

World’s Largest Genome Discovered in a Tiny Fern: ‘Breaks all records’

A group of small fork ferns – credit Pol Fernandez, released via iScienceOn the island of New Caledonia, a simple, unassuming species of fern has been identified as having the longest genome of any living organism known.It is 50 times longer than a human’s, 7% longer than the previous world record-holding species for longest genome, and 20% longer than the record-holding animal.Compared to 23 pairs of chromosomes in every human cell, the tiny fern contains 416—and if unraveled, would climb higher than Big Ben in London’s Westminster.Questions abound, as does admiration for the majesty and mysteries of biological life.“Compared to other organisms, plants are incredibly diverse when viewed at the DNA level, and that should make us pause to think about their intrinsic value in the wider picture of global biodiversity,” said Dr. Ilia Leitch, Senior Research Leader at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.“This discovery also raises many new and exciting questions about the upper limits of what is biologically possible, and we hope to solve these mysteries one day.”Tmesipteris oblanceolata is a species of New Caledonian fork fern that grows on the ground or out of rotting tree trunks. A team from Kew and the Institut Botànic de Barcelona traveled to New Caledoina’s largest island of Grand Terre to collect this species for study.20,000 species...

Read More........→December 09, 2024

Leading a new era in ancient DNA research

A new ancient DNA lab at Emory is mapping little-explored human lineages, studying genetics of the deep past to better understand modern-day populations of the Americas. Emory junior Rosseirys "Ro" De La Rosa is helping analyze DNA that she extracted from ancient bones unearthed in Uruguay — the remains of an Indigenous people known as the Charrúa. “Very few remains of the Charrúa have been found,” De La Rosa says. “They were largely wiped out by colonialism and a lot of mystery surrounds them. Anything that we can learn is important.” It may be possible to connect the ancient Charrúa to modern-day populations unaware of their link. “Culture matters,” says De La Rosa, who is continuing to work on the project remotely this semester. “Leaning about your own culture gives you a sense of unity and connection that you can pass down to others.” De La Rosa is a member of the Lindo Ancient DNA Laboratory, headed by John Lindo, Emory assistant professor of anthropology. The state-of-the-art facility, funded by major grants from National Geographic Explorer and the National Science Foundation, opened in January in Emory's Psychology and Interdisciplinary Sciences Building. It is one of the few in the world involved in every step of the complex process of solving mysteries surrounding ancient remains. "We build projects from the ground up,"...

Read More........→July 26, 2023

The first high-res 3D images of DNA segments

Credit: Berkeley Lab First-of-their-kind images by researchers at Berkeley Lab could aid in the use of DNA to build nanoscale devices. An international team working at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has captured the first high-resolution 3-D images from individual double-helix DNA segments, attached at either end of gold nanoparticles. The images detail the flexible structure of the DNA segments, which appear as nanoscale "jump ropes". This unique imaging capability, pioneered by Berkeley Lab scientists, could aid in the use of DNA segments as building blocks for molecular devices that function as nanoscale drug-delivery systems, markers for biological research, and components for computer memory and electronic devices. It could also lead to images of disease-relevant proteins that have proven elusive for other imaging techniques, and of the assembly process that forms DNA from separate, individual strands. The shapes of the coiled DNA strands, which were sandwiched between polygon-shaped gold nanoparticles, were reconstructed in 3-D using a cutting-edge electron microscope technique called individual-particle electron tomography (IPET).  This was combined with a protein-staining process and sophisticated software that provided structural details down to a scale of just...

Read More........→April 18, 2016

Genes for longer and healthier life identified

From a 'haystack' of 40,000 genes in three different organisms, scientists have found genes that are involved in physical aging. If you influence only one of these genes, the healthy lifespan of laboratory animals is extended – and possibly that of humans, too. Driven by the quest for eternal youth, humankind has spent centuries obsessed with the question of how exactly it is that we age. With advancements in molecular genetics in recent decades, the search for genes involved in the aging process has greatly accelerated. Until now, this was mostly limited to genes of individual model organisms such as the C. elegans nematode, which revealed that around 1% of its genes could influence life expectancy. However, researchers have long assumed that such genes arose during the course of evolution and in all living beings whose cells preserved a nucleus – from yeast to humans. Researchers at ETH Zurich and the JenAge consortium in Germany have now systematically gone through the genomes of three different organisms in search of the genes associated with the aging process that are present in all three species – and thus, derived from a common ancestor. Although they are found in different organisms, these so-called orthologous genes are closely related to each other, and they are all found in humans, too. To detect them, researchers...

Read More........→January 17, 2016

Research helping build computers from DNA

Scientists have found a way to "switch" the structure of DNA using copper salts and EDTA (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) -- an agent commonly found in shampoo and other household products. IMAGE: Credit: University of East Anglia New research from the University of East Anglia could one day help build computers from DNA. Scientists have found a way to 'switch' the structure of DNA using copper salts and EDTA (Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) - an agent commonly found in shampoo and other household products. It was previously known that the structure of a piece of DNA could be changed using acid, which causes it to fold up into what is known as an 'i-motif'. But new research published on Tuesday 18 August in the journal Chemical Communications reveals that the structure can be switched a second time into a hair-pin structure using positively-charged copper (copper cations). This change can also be reversed using EDTA. The applications for this discovery include nanotechnology - where DNA is used to make tiny machines, and in DNA-based computing - where computers are built from DNA rather than silicon. It could also be used for detecting the presence of copper cations, which are highly toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms, in water. Lead researcher Dr Zoë Waller, from UEA's school of Pharmacy, said: "Our research shows...

Read More........→September 06, 2015

Human embryos genetically modified by Chinese scientists

In a world first, researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, admit to having edited the genome of live human embryos to see the effect on a fatal blood disorder, thalassaemia. The research is banned in Europe – but Chinese scientists have confirmed that they recently edited the DNA of human embryos for the very first time. Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University, led by Junjiu Huang, have tried to ease concerns by explaining that they used non-viable embryos, which cannot result in a successful live birth, that were obtained from local fertility clinics. Huang's team used a revolutionary new technique known as CRISPR/Cas9, discovered by scientists at MIT. A total of 86 embryos were injected with the Cas9 protein and left for two days while the gene-editing process took place. Of these, 71 survived and subsequent tests revealed that 28 were successfully spliced, but only a fraction contained the genetic material needed to prevent the fatal blood disorder thalassaemia. Unexpected mutations were also noticed in the genes. "I think that this is a significant departure from currently accepted research practice," said Shirley Hodgson, Professor of Cancer Genetics, St George's University of London. "Can we be certain that the embryos that the researchers were working on were indeed non-viable? Any proposal to do germline...

Read More........→July 15, 2015

The Alien DNA

Scientists are nearing the next step in DNA technology, they have mapped almost the entire human genome. What did they find to be common in every human? ?Junk DNA.? They have not been able to find any function that this DNA provides, found that this DNA may not be junk at all, but could code for psychic abilities. This may sound like something out of a 50?s B movie, but it has been documented. The military and government have had programs focusing on telekinesis and remote viewing. The results were never made public of course, but they still conducted them. Many of the people who report to have these abilities happen to be abductees. This is what leads me to believe that the portions of our DNA that supposedly serve no function, control the other portions of our brain which we do not use. We currently use only 10% of our brains, so who is to say that other portions that have been dormant throughout our evolutionary advancement don?t control esp, telekinesis, remote viewing, etc? Why abductees? Simple, one of the current theories as to why the aliens are abducting people is to create an alien/human hybrid race that will have the abilities of both species. Many abductees have reported that the aliens do not speak with their mouths, but through telepathy. It seems that after repeat abductions, many people gain similar...

Read More........→September 26, 2014

The "water nymph" of the Yucatan Peninsula

The find has been named Naia, Greek for "water nymph". "Pristine prehistoric skeleton of teenage girl found in underwater cave" : by Sheryl Ubelacker, May 16th, 2014, CTV News,  The pristine skeleton of a teenaged girl who lived about 13,000 years ago, discovered in a deep, water-filled underground cavern in the sprawling cave system in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, is providing archeologists with an unprecedented glimpse into the history of the early inhabitants of the Americas. Given the name Naia, Greek for "water nymph," the remains of the 15- or 16-year-old girl were found at the bottom of the boulder-strewn, underwater chamber dubbed Hoyo Negro -- "black hole" in Spanish -- along with the scattered bones of 26 large animal species, among them sabre-tooth tigers, giant ground sloths and cave bears. "Sealed off by water and darkness for over 8,000 years, it is a time capsule of the environment and human life in central America at the end of the Ice Age, when glaciers across the globe trapped massive amounts of water as ice and sea level was far lower than it is today," said American paleontologist Jim Chatters, head of an international research team investigating the site and its archeological treasures. Chatters, the first scientist to study the prehistoric skeleton known as Kennewick Man that was found in...

Read More........→May 18, 2014

Kashmir scientists clone Pashmina kid

Scientists in Kashmir have cloned the first Pashmina goat using advanced reproductive techniques, officials at the Shere- Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences &Technology (SKUAST) said on Thursday. The March 9 birth of female kid Noori could spark breeding programmes across the region and mass production of the highpriced wool, lead project scientist Dr Riaz Ahmad Shah said. Shah and six other scientists took two years to clone Noori, using the relatively new “ handmade” cloning technique involving only a microscope and a steady hand. “ We’ve standardised the procedure.  Now it will take us half a year to produce another,” said Dr Maajid Hassan, another veterinarian who worked on the project, which was partly funded by the World Bank. The team has already started work on more clones among the university’s herd of goats. “ This is the cheapest, easier and less time- consuming” method of cloning, compared with conventional methods that use high- tech machinery and sometimes chemicals, Shah said. Pashmina, a kind of fine wool is obtained from the fleece of the goat Capra hircus . They are found in parts of the Himalayas, the Tibetan plateau and upper reaches of Ladakh. The wool is spun through a tedious manual processto produce the finest quality of Pashmina. Source: Ananta-Tec...

Read More........→January 26, 2014

Gene of the week: internet addiction

Everybody is talking about internet addiction – many people spend hours online and immediately start feeling bad if they are unable to do so. Medically, this phenomenon has not been as clearly described as nicotine or alcohol dependency. But a German study in the Journal of Addiction Medicine suggests that there are molecular-genetic connections in internet addiction, too. "It was shown that Internet addiction is not a figment of our imagination," says the lead author, Dr. Christian Montag of the University of Bonn. "Researchers and therapists are increasingly closing in on it." He found that some people’s thoughts revolve around the internet during the day and that they feel their wellbeing is severely impacted if they have to go without it. The problem users seem to have a genetic variation that also plays a major role in nicotine addiction. "It seems that this connection is not only essential for nicotine addiction, but also for internet addiction," reports the Bonn psychologist. “The current data already shows that there are clear indications for genetic causes of Internet addiction." The actual mutation is on the CHRNA4 gene that changes the genetic make¬up for the Alpha 4 subunit on the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. "Within the group of subjects exhibiting problematic Internet behavior this variant occurs...

Read More........→December 19, 2013

Fertilization technique to create baby with DNA from 3 people found in UK

Britain is planning to become the first country in the world to offer controversial "three-parent" fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on cureless diseases to their children. The methods, today only at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, would for the first time include implanting genetically modified embryos into women. It involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy. The methods are designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases - incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide. Mitochondria act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells. The potential treatment is known as three-parent in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor. Britain's fertility regulator says it has found broad public support for innovative in vitro fertilization techniques. It also found there was no evidence to suggest the techniques were unsafe, but said further research was still necessary. Critics, however, slammed the decision as a breach of ethics, saying there were already safe methods...

Read More........→December 04, 2013

Scientists Create False Memories In Mice

Image credit: Nick Harris1 via flickr | http://bit.ly/172BRt9  “Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events,” said Albert Einstein. It is also deceptive because it is frequently wrong, sometimes dangerously so. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed the ability to implant mice with false memories. The memories can be easily induced and are just as strong as real memories, physiological proof of something psychologists and lawyers have known for years. The findings are a serious matter. According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness testimony played a role in 75 percent of guilty verdicts eventually overturned by DNA testing after people spent years in prison. Some prisoners may even have been executed due to false eyewitness testimony. It was not because the witnesses were lying. They were just wrong, said Susumu Tonegawa, a molecular biologist and the lead author in the MIT study. In the longest criminal trial in American history, the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, was charged with multiple incidents of child abuse. After seven years and $15 million in prosecution expenses, some charges were dropped and the defendants were acquitted of others when it became clear some of the accusations were based on false memories, some possibly planted by childrens’...

Read More........→July 26, 2013

Test-tube baby: 35 anniversary of breakthrough in medicine

The  first  successful  birth  of  a test-tube baby Louise Joy Brown occurred in Oldham in Britain 35 years ago. This method is known as an extracorporeal conception (ECO), and scientists called it a breakthrough in medicine. However, it is very hard to say at the moment whether its consequences are positive or negative. Of course, as before, children need their mothers. An extracorporeal conception is an assisted method of conceiving a child outside the human body. Quite a number of medical scientists regard this technology as a tangible achievement of the 20th century, and it is not by chance that one of its developers, Robert Edwards from Britain, was awarded the Nobel Prize. An extracorporeal conception is very popular in Europe and the USA today – it helps childless couples not only to have a child but also to plan a pregnancy. It makes it possible to “store up” the embryos, to freeze them and to unfreeze them in case of need. Besides, married couples can decide in advance how many children they want. According to scientists, an extracorporeal conception is improving Europe’s demography. However, the number of those who do not approve this technology is also very high, a reproduction gynecologist, Denis Ogorodnikov, says, adding that moral and ethical aspects are of importance here. “An extracorporeal...

Read More........→July 26, 2013

Intelligent Alien Dinosaurs?

Dinosaurs once roamed and ruled the Earth. Is it possible that similar humongous creatures may have evolved on another planet – a world that DIDN’T get smacked by an asteroid – and later they developed to have human-like, intelligent brains? A recent paper discussing why the biochemical signature of life on Earth is so consistent in orientation somehow segued into the possibility that advanced versions of T. Rex and other dinosaurs may be the life forms that live on other worlds. The conclusion? “We would be better off not meeting them,” said scientist Ronald Breslow, author of the paper. The building blocks of terrestrial amino acids, sugars, and the genetic materials DNA and RNA have two possible orientations, left or right, which mirror each other in what is called chirality. On Earth, with the exception of a few bacteria, amino acids have the left-handed orientation. Most sugars have a right-handed orientation. How did that homochirality happen? If meteorites carried specific types of amino acids to Earth about 4 billion years, that could have set the pattern the left-handed chirality in terrestial proteins. “Of course,” Breslow said in a press release, “showing that it could have happened this way is not the same as showing that it did. An implication from this work is that elsewhere in the universe there could be life forms...

Read More........→July 26, 2013

Could turning on a gene prevent diabetes?

Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 % of cases of diabetes around the world, afflicting 2.5 million Canadians and costing over 15 billion dollars a year in Canada. It is a severe health condition which makes body cells incapable of taking up and using sugar. Dr. Alexey Pshezhetsky of the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, affiliated with the University of Montreal, has discovered that the resistance to insulin seen in type 2 diabetics is caused partly by the lack of a protein that has not previously been associated with diabetes. This breakthrough could potentially help to prevent diabetes. "We discovered that Neu1, a protein nicknamed after "neuraminidase 1", turns the absorption of sugar "on" or "off" in body cells, by regulating the amount of sialic acid on the surface of cells", Dr. Pshezhetsky explains. "We are now trying to find a way to restore Neu1 levels and function in diabetes. If we can remove sialic acid residues from the cell surface, this will force the insulin receptor do its job of absorbing blood sugar properly. This could give doctors an opportunity to reduce the use of insulin therapy, and might help to reduce the diabetes epidemic, says Dr. Pshezhetsky. The results of his study done on cells and mice were published this month in the journal Diabetes. Dr Pshezhetsky and his team are now testing...

Read More........→July 22, 2013

Evolutionary biologists urged to adapt their research methods

Synthesizing ancestral molecules can give a clearer view of genetic evolution, says Shozo Yokoyama. Photo of olive baboon by Nivet Dilmen, via Wikipedia Commons. By Carol Clark: To truly understand the mechanisms of natural selection, evolutionary biologists need to shift their focus from present-day molecules to synthesized, ancestral ones, says Shozo Yokoyama, a biologist at Emory University. Yokoyama presented evidence for why evolutionary biology needs to make this shift on Friday, February 15, during the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston. “This is not just an evolutionary biology problem, it’s a science problem,” says Yokoyama, a leading expert in the natural selection of color vision. “If you want to understand the mechanisms of an adaptive phenotype, the function of a gene and how that function changes, you have to look back in time. That is the secret. Studying ancestral molecules will give us a better understanding of genes that could be applied to medicine and other areas of science.” For years, positive Darwinian selection has been studied almost exclusively using comparative sequence analysis of present-day molecules, Yokoyama notes. This approach has been fueled by increasingly fast and cheap genome sequencing techniques. But the faster, easier route, he says, is not necessarily...

Read More........→May 27, 2013

UFO documentary reveals “humanoid of unknown classification”

By Alejandro Rojas, A new documentary on UFOs, extraterrestrials, and advanced clean energy, hopes to provide evidence that the government has figured out how UFOs operate and are hiding advanced technology that can provide clean energy. The film also features the discovery of an alleged humanoid body whose DNA has been sequenced and found to be of an “unknown classification.” Photos of the being were released today with the announcement of the Hollywood premiere of the film scheduled for later this month. It was also announced that the film is narrated by actor Thomas Jane, who is known to have in interest in UFOs. The new film is titled Sirius, and features the work of Dr. Steven Greer. With a similar goal as the film, Greer brought together a panel of highly credible witnesses who testified in front of representatives from all of the major media outlets at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. in May of 2001. At that time he filmed hours of testimony from hundreds of credible witnesses. His work has been very influential in convincing people that the government knows more than it is sharing, and as he puts it, “Once people understand that classified projects have figured out how UFO’s operate, they will realize we no longer need oil, coal and nuclear power. This is the truth that has driven the secrecy.” Dr. Steven...

Read More........→April 06, 2013

Chimps show greater genetic diversity than humans

London,Groups of chimpanzees within central Africa are more different genetically than humans living on different continents, a study has found. The Oxford University-led study published in the journal PLoS Genetics suggests that greenomics can provide a valuable new tool for use in chimpanzee conservation. It has the potential to identify the population of origin of an individual chimpanzee or the provenance of a sample of bush meat, a release from Oxford University said. Common chimpanzees in equatorial Africa have long been recognised as falling into three distinct populations or sub-species: western, central and eastern chimpanzees. A fourth group, the Cameroonian chimpanzee, has been proposed to live in southern Nigeria and western Cameroon but there has been considerable controversy as to whether it constitutes a distinct group. Oxford University researchers, along with scientists from the University of Cambridge, the Broad Institute, the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun and the Biomedical Primate Research Centre, examined DNA from 54 chimpanzees. They compared the DNA at 818 positions across the genome that varied between individuals. Their analysis showed that Cameroonian chimpanzees are distinct from the other, well-established groups. And previous conclusions that Cameroonian and western chimpanzees are most closely related...

Read More........→March 14, 2013

American geneticist claims Bigfoot is real after sequencing his genomes in a DNA study

Last November team of American scientists led Dr Melba Ketchum of DNA diagnostics in Nacogdoches, Texas, announced that they have found proof that the legendary ‘Sasquatch’ or ‘Bigfoot’ actually exists. After sequencing three Bigfoot genomes the team concluded that Sasquatch is extant in North America and is a human relative that arose approximately 13 thousand years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo Sapiens with some unknown primate species. The Voice of Russia contacted Dr Ketchum to ask her for the details of one of the most controversial projects of the decade. Voice of Russia: Before we get into details, I would like to ask you how you came up with the idea to study bigfoot. At the very least, this is a very unusual choice of study for a serious geneticist. Dr Melba Ketchum: Well, I must say that it came to me, I did not choose it. What we do in our laboratory is we perform species identification mostly for forensic use. However, over the years we have also been receiving samples that supposedly contained DNA of a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch. Five years ago one of the TV show production companies asked us to identify some samples one of which was allegedly a yeti sample. At the same time I also received the samples from North America Bigfoot Search Organization. We did not have enough DNA to go far with neither of the samples...

Read More........→March 03, 2013