Sampling DNA in Seawater Can Reveal the Health of Dolphin Populations, in First for Conservation

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DNA floating in seawater is now enough to let scientists monitor the health of America’s dolphin populations.

Sampling DNA in seawater can show the local presence (or absence) of a species, but until now could give little information about those measures of biodiversity that are the most useful in conservation.

But, scientists in the US have now shown that mitochondrial DNA in water sampled near schools of dolphins contains enough information to measure their local effective population size—and monitor the health of these populations.

 

DNA is everywhere in the world’s oceans—not only inside cells from skin, scales, mucous, and feces, but also floating freely. Sequencing such ‘environmental DNA’ (eDNA) from open water has long been used as a cost-effective way of gauging the number and identity of species in a region, especially when they are rare and elusive or living at great depths.

But species richness is only the most basic biodiversity measure. Until now, eDNA-based methods could only give limited insight into the variables that are most relevant for conservation: the number of individuals, the evenness of the abundances of co-occurring species, or their within-species genetic diversity.

But that may be about to change, shows a new groundbreaking study in Frontiers in Marine Science.

“Here we show that repeated eDNA sampling can be used to estimate the genetic diversity of dolphins that occur in large schools and have very large populations,” said corresponding author Dr Frederick Archer from the NOAA/NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California.

“This is important because genetic diversity, its outcome measure, can be used as a measure of population size and how ready a population is to react to changes in its environment.”

Around Santa Catalina Island, located 47 km off Long Beach, California, the researchers followed 15 schools of dolphins with small boats in 2021. They focused on the four most common species locally: long-beaked common dolphins, short-beaked common dolphins, common bottlenose dolphins, and Risso’s dolphins.

Whenever they encountered a school, the researchers collected two-liter samples of seawater from the surface to compare the mitochondrial eDNA with that in public databases.

The scientists found 836 mitochondrial sequence variants in 126 water samples, of which 76% were from cetaceans and 60% from toothed whales. Overall, 29% were from the species of the school, which had been visually identified.

Long-beaked common dolphins had the greatest genetic diversity, followed by short-beaked common dolphins, while Risso’s and bottlenose dolphins proved much less diverse around Santa Catalina.

“Our study demonstrates the utility [of eDNA surveys] for efficiently assessing and comparing genetic diversity in social odontocetes,” concluded the authors.

Theory holds water

The authors are eager to put their methods to good use in conservation, now that they have been proven to work.

“It would be good to start eDNA monitoring programs as soon as possible that were not possible before. For example, we will be able to see how species composition in very small areas change over the course of a year – including rarer species that we don’t often detect on visual surveys,” said Archer.

“This can give us a lot of information on habitat use and will also allow us to potentially observe how environmental changes and anthropogenic effects such as pollution or underwater sound affect species distributions.” Sampling DNA in Seawater Can Reveal the Health of Dolphin Populations, in First for Conservation

Read More........→May 28, 2026

Johns Hopkins Team Develops Therapeutic, Nasally-Delivered DNA Vaccine for Tuberculosis

Artist’s illustration of tuberculosis bacteria (TB) – credit, US CDC

A research team at Johns Hopkins Medicine is developing a nose-delivered inoculation against tuberculosis, the world’s leading cause of death from infectious disease.

The approach fuses two tuberculosis genes with the goal of directing the immune system to fight drug-tolerant bacterial survivors that can endure antibiotic treatment to spread another day.

The paper on the vaccine was published last week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, where JH Medicine researchers were joined by colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

TB is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be spread asymptomatically by around 2 billion people. In 2024 , WHO reported that TB was the leading cause of death from a single infectious disease.

In recent years, WHO has called for therapeutic vaccines that can be used alongside drug therapies to shorten TB treatment regimens and improve outcomes, particularly because long multidrug courses are difficult to complete, and drug-resistant TB strains continue to emerge. The vaccine described in the new Johns Hopkins study shows promise for meeting that need.

The new Johns Hopkins vaccine, says study lead author Styliani Karanika, MD, fuses two genes: relMtb and Mip3α, and is given through the nose to take advantage of 3 beneficial biological activities.

“Administered together with first-line TB drug therapy, our intranasal DNA fusion vaccine helped infected mice clear the disease bacteria faster, reduced lung inflammation, and prevented relapse after treatment ended,” says Karanika, a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research.

“The vaccine also helped the powerful TB drug combination of bedaquiline, pretomanid, and linezolid work better, suggesting it could be used with treatments against drug-resistant TB to help the body fight the disease, even hard-to-treat cases.”

Dr. Karanika explained that TB bacteria possess a gene—relMtb—that produces a protein called RelMtb—which together help the microbes survive hostile conditions such as antibiotic exposure, low oxygen, and nutrient limitation by entering a drug-tolerant persistent state.

Fusing relMtb with another gene called Mip3α produces a signal that attracts immature human dendritic cells. These cells pick up TB proteins and ‘present’ them to T cells, the immune cells that help coordinate a targeted attack on the TB bacteria.

“Finally, intranasal delivery focuses vaccination on the respiratory mucosa in the lungs where TB infection occurs, helping generate long-lasting localized T-cell immunity in the airways and lungs, along with systemic immune responses,” says Karanika.

By combining these strategies, the investigators aimed to strengthen immune activity directly in the respiratory tract, where transmission most commonly occurs.

In the mouse studies, this approach both improved the quantity and organization of dendritic and T-cells in the lungs, and generated immune responses both locally and systemically. The improved response included to two types of T-cells, CD4 (also known as helper T-cells) and CD8 (also known as killer T-cells).

One study strongpoint was that it included tests on primates: in this case, rhesus macaques. The researchers found that their nose-delivered DNA vaccine prompted measurable TB‑focused immune responses in blood and in the airways similar to what led to lower bacterial counts in the lungs of the mice they studied.

These responses persisted for at least 6 months, suggesting durability for the vaccine’s action.

“These nonhuman primate data are encouraging because they show that the Mip3α/relMtb vaccine can generate durable, antigen-stimulated immune responses in an animal model whose immune system more closely resembles that of humans,” said Dr. Karanika. “That gives us an important translational bridge between the mouse efficacy studies and the additional preclinical work needed before human trials.”

Readers may recoil from the notion of primate testing, but Old World Monkeys are very susceptible to TB, and in fact spread it between themselves just as we do. Research has shown that TB has been spread among humans as far back as 70,000 years, and followed our migration out of Africa and across Asia.The authors say their findings support a broader strategy of targeting surviving TB bacteria with immunotherapy, rather than relying solely on antibiotics to eliminate actively replicating bacteria. Because DNA vaccines are relatively stable and can be manufactured efficiently, they may offer practical advantages if this approach ultimately proves effective in humans. Johns Hopkins Team Develops Therapeutic, Nasally-Delivered DNA Vaccine for Tuberculosis

Read More........→April 15, 2026

Microbes in Antarctica survive the freezing and dark winter by living on air

Ry Holland, Monash University

Winter in Antarctica is long and dark. Temperatures remain well below freezing. In many places, the Sun sets in April and does not rise above the horizon again until August. Without sunlight, photosynthetic life such as plants, mosses and algae cannot make energy.

But that’s not to say all life stops.

In a new study published in The ISME Journal, my colleagues and I show that Antarctic microbes make energy from the air at temperatures as low as –20°C. This finding improves our understanding of how life survives at temperature extremes in Antarctica – and how climate change will affect this important process.

How to make energy from air

In 2017, scientists showed that a large number of Antarctic microbes can generate energy from atmospheric gases present at very low concentrations.

This process is called “aerotrophy”. By using enzymes that are very finely tuned to “sniff out” the hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, these microbes have found a way to make energy from the air itself – a huge advantage in Antarctica’s nutrient-poor desert soils.

What remained unknown until now was the temperature limits of this process. Could aerotrophy be a way to power the continent’s soil communities through the winter?

Taking the lab down south

Measuring how quickly these microbes consume such a small amount of fuel can be difficult.

From 2022–24, we collected surface soil samples from different areas across East Antarctica and analysed them in our lab.

We measured how quickly they can use the atmospheric gases. We also extracted all the DNA from the soil microbes and sequenced it. This tells us what microbes are present, what genes they have, and what they are capable of using as energy sources.

We showed aerotrophy happening in the lab at representative summer (4°C) and winter (–20°C) temperatures. This means hydrogen and carbon monoxide are a viable food source not just over the summer months, but year-round. What was even more surprising though, was the upper temperature limit.

Soil temperatures in Antarctica rarely rise above 20°C. Yet we found microbes in these soils that continued to generate energy from hydrogen up to a staggering 75°C. It seems as though microbes in Antarctic soils are well adapted to the continent’s cold temperatures, but not restricted to them. It’s a bit like seeing a penguin thrive in a tropical jungle.

We also wanted to see this process occurring in Antarctica itself, so two years ago we brought the lab down south. We collected fresh soil samples, sealed them in the glass vials, and took gas samples.

For the first time, it was clear that under real-world conditions these soil microbes were still munching their way through hydrogen.

The primary producers of Antarctica

DNA sequencing has showed us that the vast majority of microbes in Antarctic soils encode the genes to gain energy from hydrogen. Many of these bacteria also have genes to take carbon from the atmosphere.

These aerotrophs are “primary producers”, generating new biomass from the air itself.

In most land-based ecosystems, photosynthesis is thought to be the bottom of the food chain. Photosynthesis takes energy from sunlight and carbon from the atmosphere and turns it into yummy organic compounds.

It’s what makes plants grow. Plants are primary producers that are eaten by herbivores, which are then eaten by carnivores.

In Antarctica’s desert soils, photosynthesis is relatively rare. Instead, we hypothesise that aerotrophy fulfils the primary producer role in many places.

This makes sense because, unlike sunlight-dependent photosythesis, we now know that aerotrophy can happen year-round. Another benefit is that it doesn’t require liquid water, whereas photosynthesis does.

Hydrogen in a heating world

Aerotrophy clearly has an important role in Antarctic ecosystems. So next, we wanted to determine how global warming might affect this process.

Under low-emissions scenarios, we predict a 4% increase in how quickly aerotrophs use atmospheric hydrogen. Under very high-emissions scenarios, this increase rises to 35%. The numbers are similar for carbon monoxide.

Although hydrogen isn’t a greenhouse gas itself, it is important because it affects how long some greenhouse gases, including methane, hang around in the atmosphere.

Soils (including the microbes that live in them) are responsible for 82% of all hydrogen consumed on Earth globally. In other words, they are a hydrogen sink. This is a crucial component in the global hydrogen cycle.

There are a lot of factors that determine how microorganisms will respond to climate change. Temperature is just one of them. This study is an important piece of the puzzle as scientists figure out how resilient Antarctica’s unique microbal ecosystems are.

Ry Holland, Research Fellow in Microbial Ecology, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→March 12, 2026

Chemical Shield Stops DNA Damage from Triggering Disease–’A Paradigm Shift’

Infographic by Linlin Zhao, University of California Riverside

A new chemical probe protects healthy cells from DNA damage, preserving them from one of the 8 hallmarks of aging.

The story of this potentially paradigmatic development begins where so much of human health begins: the mitochondria. These organelles are disrespectfully monikered as “the powerhouses” of the cell, but they do so much more than just provide cellular energy.

It’s so important, it even has its own DNA. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is separate from the DNA housed in a cell’s nucleus. While nuclear DNA contains the vast majority of the genetic code, mitochondria carry their own smaller genomes that are essential for cellular functions.

MtDNA exists in multiple copies per cell, but when damage occurs these copies are often degraded rather than repaired. If left unchecked, this degradation can set off a cascade of failures linked to heart conditions, neurodegeneration, and chronic inflammation.

Published in the German Chemical Society journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, researchers at UC Riverside developed a chemical probe that binds to damaged sites in mitochondrial DNA and blocks the enzymatic processes that lead to its degradation.

“There are already pathways in cells that attempt repair,” said Linlin Zhao, UCR associate professor of chemistry, who led the project. “But degradation happens more frequently than repair due to the redundancy of mtDNA molecules in mitochondria. Our strategy is to stop the loss before it becomes a problem.”

The new molecule includes two key components: one that recognizes and attaches to damaged DNA, and another that ensures it is delivered specifically to mitochondria, leaving nuclear DNA unaffected.

In lab tests as well as studies using living cells, the probe significantly reduced mtDNA loss after lab-induced damage mimicking exposure to toxic chemicals such as nitrosamines, which are common environmental pollutants found in processed foods, water, and cigarette smoke.

In cells treated with the probe molecule, mtDNA levels remained higher, which could be critical for maintaining energy production in vulnerable tissues such as the heart and brain.

Mitochondrial DNA loss is increasingly linked to a range of diseases, from multi-organ mitochondrial depletion syndromes to chronic inflammatory conditions such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease. When mtDNA fragments escape from mitochondria into the rest of the cell, they can act as distress signals that activate immune responses.

“If we can retain the DNA inside the mitochondria, we might be able to prevent those downstream signals that cause inflammation,” Zhao said.

Importantly, the researchers found that the protected DNA remained functional, despite being chemically tagged.

“We thought adding a bulky chemical might prevent the DNA from working properly,” Zhao said. “But to our surprise, it was still able to support transcription, the process cells use to turn DNA into RNA, and then into proteins. That opens the door for therapeutic applications.”

The Hallmarks of Aging – credit Rebelo-Marques et al, Frontiers, CC 4.0. BY-SA

The project builds on more than two years of research into the cellular mechanisms that govern mtDNA processing. While additional studies are needed to explore clinical potential, the new molecule represents a paradigm shift.

Indeed, DNA damage makes up two of the 8 hallmarks of aging first outlined in a landmark paper in 2013, which also includes mitochondrial dysfunction as an antagonistic hallmark, i.e. a result of DNA damage.“This is a chemical approach to prevention, not just repair,” Zhao said. “It’s a new way of thinking about how to defend the genome under stress.” Chemical Shield Stops DNA Damage from Triggering Disease–’A Paradigm Shift’

Read More........→August 01, 2025

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

Jamie Wood, University of Adelaide and Theresa Cole, University of Adelaide

Studies 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 pits up to 80cm deep at ten Adélie penguin colonies along the 700km Ross Sea coastline. We then collected 156 sediment samples from different depths in each excavation.

Six of these colonies were still active, meaning birds return annually to breed. The other four had been abandoned at various times over the past 6,000 years.

From these sediments we generated 94 billion DNA sequences, which provided us with an unparalleled window into the past lives of Adélie penguins and their ecosystem.

We detected the DNA of several animal species besides Adélie penguins. These animals included two other birds, three seals and two soil invertebrates.

Not all of this DNA came from penguin poo. Our samples also contained DNA from feathers, hairs or skin cells of other species in the environment at the time.

Sediment samples were taken from ten penguin colonies of various ages, six active (white dot) and four abandoned (coloured dot), on the coast of Ross Sea in Antarctica. Wood, J., et al (2025) Nature Communications, CC BY-NC-ND

Penguin population size and diet

When we took a closer look at the DNA from penguins of the present day, we found more genetic diversity in samples from larger colonies.

Recognising this relationship between genetic diversity and colony size enabled us to estimate the size of former colonies. We could also reconstruct population trends through time.

For example, in samples from active colonies, we found penguin genetic diversity increased as we sampled closer and closer to the surface. This may reflect population growth over the past century.

The DNA also revealed changes in penguin diets over time. Over the past 4,000 years, the penguins in the southern Ross Sea switched from mainly eating one type of fish – the bald notothen – to another, Antarctic silverfish.

The bald notothen lives beneath the sea ice, so this prey-switching was likely driven by a change in sea ice extent compared with the past.

Surprise! Elephant seals

We made an unexpected discovery at Cape Hallett, in the northern Ross Sea. This is the site of an active penguin colony.

Samples of sediment from close to the surface contained lots of penguin DNA and eggshell. But samples from further down, where penguin DNA and eggshell were scarce, contained DNA from southern elephant seals.

Today, elephant seals are uncommon visitors to the Antarctic continent, and breed on subantarctic islands including Macquarie, Campbell and Antipodes Islands. Yet, bones of elephant seal pups found along the Ross Sea coast indicate the species used to breed in the area.

Carbon dating of these bones indicate elephant seal colonies began disappearing from the southern Ross Sea around 1,000 years ago. Over the following 200 years, colonies in the northern Ross Sea began vanishing too.

As the climate cooled and the extent of sea ice increased, elephant seals could no longer access suitable breeding sites. These sites were then taken over by Adélie penguins who expanded into areas once occupied by seals.

Our DNA evidence suggests Cape Hallett was one of the last strongholds of southern elephant seals on the icy continent. But we may yet again see elephant seals breeding on the Antarctic mainland as the world warms and sea ice melts.

Even more ancient DNA in Antarctica

Our study spans the past 6,000 years, but our research suggests it would be possible to go even further back.

The DNA fragments we found were very well preserved, showing little of the damage expected in warmer climates.

So it should be possible to obtain much older DNA from sediments on land in Antarctica – maybe even 1 million-year-old DNA, as recently reported from Antarctic sediments beneath the ocean floor.

Worthy of lasting protection

In December 2017, 2.09 million square kilometres of the Ross Sea and adjoining Southern Ocean became the world’s largest marine protected area. Establishing the protection was a major achievement, yet it was only afforded for 35 years.

After 2052, continuation of the region’s protected status will require international agreement. Knowledge of the vulnerability of local species and their risk in the face of change will play a key role in informing the decision. Our research provides a case study for how ancient environmental DNA can contribute towards this understanding.

Jamie Wood, Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Evolution, University of Adelaide and Theresa Cole, Postdoctoral technician in environmental DNA, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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 iScience

On 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 from the Tree of Life have had their genomes completely sequenced, and this literature has shown that having a complex genetic code isn’t always an advantage.

Larger genomes require more resources for DNA replication, repair, and transcription, while a larger DNA sequence needs a larger nucleus, and therefore a larger cell, to house it.

Dr. Leitch told Reuters that “perhaps unsurprisingly, species with larger genomes are at greater risk of extinction,” for a similar reason, one might imagine, that simpler machines with fewer moving parts tend to last longer than complicated and sophisticated machines with many; a Honda Civic will run longer than a Lamborghini Aventador.

The previous record holder for the longest genome was the Japanese flowering plant species Paris japonica while the longest genome known from the animal kingdom is the African marbled lungfish, (Protopterus aethiopicus).

The smallest genome is the fungus species Encephalitozoon intestinalis, with 2.6 megabase pairs. For context, the New Caledonian fork fern contains 168 gigabase pairs. An appropriate comparison would be to compare the file size of the original Tetris game to that of a modern open-world role-playing game like The Witcher or World of Warcraft.

For those with greater interest in DNA, Dr. Leitch and her colleagues from Kew and IBB published a paper on the fork fern, writing that genome size variation and its disconnect from species complexity, “is known as the ‘C-value paradox’ or ‘C-value enigma,'” and has intrigued biologists for over half a century.

“Rapid advances in DNA sequencing are now providing compelling evidence showing that variation in DNA amount arises predominantly from differences in the frequency of polyploidy, abundance of non-coding repetitive DNA, and the dynamics of the processes that amplify, erode, and delete DNA,” they write in their introduction.However with only 20,000 species that have had their genomes sequenced, the authors doubt that science has uncovered the full extent of genome size diversity. World’s Largest Genome Discovered in a Tiny Fern: ‘Breaks all records’

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," Lindo says. "We extract DNA from ancient remains here, sequence it here, analyze it here, and publish the results." Most previous ancient DNA work involves people of European ancestry. A focus of the Emory lab, however is exploring how environmental changes — including those caused by European contact — affected the biology of Indigenous and other populations of the Americas."Our work can connect people to ancestries they potentially don't know about," Lindo explains. "It can also give them insights into how historic, and even prehistoric, events may be affecting them today, especially in terms of health risks and disparities." eScienceCommons: Leading a new era in ancient DNA research

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 2 nanometres (nm), or about two billionths of a metre. "We had no idea about what the double-strand DNA would look like between the nanogold particles," said Gang Ren, a Berkeley Lab scientist who led the research. "This is the first time for directly visualising an individual double-strand DNA segment in 3-D." While the 3-D reconstructions show the basic nanoscale structure of the samples, Ren said the next step will be to improve the resolution to the sub-nanometre scale: "Even in this current state, we begin to see 3-D structures at 1- to 2-nanometre resolution," he said. "Through better instrumentation and improved computational algorithms, it would be promising to push the resolution to that visualising a single DNA

Berkeley Lab researchers Gang Ren (standing) and Lei Zhang. Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt/Berkeley Lab.

helix within an individual protein." The technique, he said, has already excited interest among some prominent pharmaceutical companies and nanotechnology researchers, and his science team already has dozens of related research projects being planned. In future studies, they could attempt to improve the imaging resolution for complex structures that incorporate more DNA segments as a sort of "DNA origami," Ren said. Researchers hope to build and better characterise nanoscale molecular devices using DNA segments that can, for example, store and deliver drugs to targeted areas in the body. "DNA is easy to program, synthesise and replicate, so it can be used as a special material to quickly self-assemble into nanostructures and to guide the operation of molecular-scale devices," he said. "Our current study is just a proof of concept for imaging these kinds of molecular devices' structures." His team's work is published in the journal Nature Communications. Source: futuretimeline.net

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 examined around 40,000 genes in the nematode C. elegans, zebra fish and mice. By screening them, the scientists wanted to determine which genes are regulated in an identical manner in all three organisms in each comparable aging stage: young, mature and old. As a measure of gene activity, they recorded the amount of messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules found in the cells of these animals. mRNA is the transcript of a gene and the blueprint of a protein. When there are many copies of an mRNA of a specific gene, it is very active; the gene is said to be "upregulated". Fewer mRNA copies, to the contrary, are regarded as a sign of low activity. From this information, the researchers used statistical models to establish an intersection of genes that were regulated in the same manner in the worms, fish and mice. This showed that the three organisms have only 30 genes in common that significantly influence the aging process. 

From left to right: C. elegans nematode, zebra fish and mouse. Credit: Bob Goldstein [CC BY-SA 3.0]

By conducting experiments in which the mRNA of the corresponding genes were selectively blocked, the researchers pinpointed their effect on the aging process in nematode worms. With a dozen of these genes, blocking them extended the lifespan by at least five percent. One of these genes proved to be particularly influential: the bcat-1 gene. "When we blocked the effect of this gene, it significantly extended the mean lifespan of the nematode by up to 25 percent," says Professor Michael Ristow, coordinating author of the recently published study and Professor of Energy Metabolism at ETH. When the gene activity of bcat-1 was inhibited, branched-chain amino acids accumulated in the tissue, triggering a molecular signalling cascade that increased longevity. Moreover, the timespan during which the worms remained healthy was extended. As a measure of vitality, the researchers observed the accumulation of aging pigments, the speed at which the creatures moved, and how often the nematodes successfully reproduced. All of these parameters improved markedly. Professor Ristow has no doubt that the same mechanism occurs in humans: "We looked only for the genes that are conserved in evolution and therefore exist in all organisms including humans," he says. A follow-up study is already planned. "However, we can't measure the life expectancy of humans for obvious reasons," he adds. Instead, they plan to incorporate various health parameters, such as cholesterol or blood sugar levels in their study to obtain indicators on the health status of their subjects. Multiple branched-chain amino acids are already being used to treat liver damage and also feature in sports nutrition products. This follow-up study will deliver new and important indicators on how the aging process could be influenced and how age-related diseases might be prevented. "However, the point is not for people to grow even older – but rather, to stay healthy for longer," the researchers argue. Given the unfavourable demographics and steadily increasing life expectancy, it is important to extend the healthy life phase – or "healthspan" – and not to simply reach an even higher age that is characterised by chronic diseases. With such preventive measures, elderly people could greatly improve their quality of life, while at the same time cutting their healthcare costs by more than half. Source: http://www.futuretimeline.net

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 how the structure of our genetic material - DNA - can be changed and used in a way we didn't realise. "A single switch was possible before - but we show for the first time how the structure can be switched twice. "A potential application of this finding could be to create logic gates for DNA based computing. Logic gates are an elementary building block of digital circuits - used in computers and other electronic equipment. They are traditionally made using diodes or transistors which act as electronic switches. "This research expands how DNA could be used as a switching mechanism for a logic gate in DNA-based computing or in nano-technology." Source: Article

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 genetic manipulation should be very carefully considered by international regulatory bodies before it should be considered a serious research prospect." "This news emphasises the need for an immediate global ban on the creation of GM designer babies," comments Dr David King, director of UK watchdog Human Genetics Alert. "It is critical that we avoid a eugenic future in which the rich can buy themselves a baby with built-in genetic advantages. It is entirely unnecessary since there are already many ethical ways to avoid thalassaemia. This research is a classic example of scientific careerism – assuring one's place in the history books even though the research is unnecessary and unethical." "The study is a landmark, as well as a cautionary tale," says George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Their study should be a stern warning to any practitioner who thinks the technology is ready for testing to eradicate disease genes." The research appears in the journal Protein and Cell after the prestigious journals Nature and Science refused to publish it on ethical grounds. Source: Article

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 abilities. If the aliens are trying to make a change in human evolution, what better way that to reactivate these dormant traits so that human beings will be able to have a cosmic awareness instead of just a global one? Junk DNA that seems to have no function in our current state as a species may be in fact part of our creator?s original blue print. We have the ability to use other portions of our brains, instead our society has stunted our growth and prevented us from developing into a truly ideal society.  Source: Article, Image: flickr.com

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 Washington state in 1996, described Hoyo Negro as being like a miniature of California's La Brea tar pits, "only without the tar and with considerably better preservation." At the time of Naia's death, the caves would have been dry and accessible, he told a media teleconference. "Perhaps seeking fresh water in the dark passages, animals and at least one human fell into this inescapable ... trap." Naia's remains were discovered in 2007 by three Mexican cave divers exploring an underwater cavern, deep in the Yucatan jungle about eight kilometres from the Caribbean coast. In a 50-metre-deep sinkhole within the cavern, the girl's skull was resting on a boulder, "laying upside-down with a perfect set of teeth and dark eye sockets looking back at us," said diver Alberto Nava. After the divers reported their find to the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico, a consortium of 16 scientists and cave explorers from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada was formed in 2011 to photograph and document the site, and to collect fossilized flora and fauna samples for testing. "A big part of it has just been trying to map the locations of things and get the shape of the tunnels and cavern, and mapping locations of human bones and animal bones," said Ed Reinhardt, a professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton who is part of the research team. His role is studying microfossils, such as those of single-celled animals, and water salinity, within Hoyo Negro. But beyond the stunning discovery of Naia's skeletal remains in her watery grave, reported Thursday in the journal Science, is what DNA from her bones is telling researchers about the origins of the Western Hemisphere's first peoples and their link to modern-day native Americans. Based on carbon-dating and other chronology testing, the researchers estimate "the small, slight" girl lived between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago. DNA was extracted from one of Naia's teeth and scientists sequenced what's called mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child. The results show the girl is related, maternally at least, to today's native Americans, meaning both would trace their lineage to Beringia -- the land masses on either side of the ancient land bridge now covered by the Bering Sea that was used by prehistoric people to migrate from northeast Asia into what is now Alaska and southward into Central and South America. Those first migrants have been dubbed the Clovis people. Whether all early inhabitants of the Americas came across the Bering land bridge or somehow migrated from elsewhere in the world remains a controversial question because of the differences in skull shape and facial features among prehistoric fossilized remains discovered across the Americas and modern-day indigenous populations. Naia's skull shape and facial features are considered "Paleoamerican" and differ from native Americans living today in the Western Hemisphere. "Because she exhibits the distinctive Paleoamerican skull and facial features, the study shows for the first time that Paleoamericans with these distinctive features can have Beringian ancestry," said Deborah Bolnick, a genomic anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Bolnick said the physical differences between them are likely due to evolutionary changes that occurred either in Beringia or in the Americas over the last 9,000 years, rather than the two groups having separate origins. "Mitochondrial DNA for this individual does not exclude the possibility of separate ancestry for some Paleoamericans, but our results provide no evidence for an early migration to the Americas from other regions of the world -- southeast Asia, Australia or Europe -- as some have proposed," she said. "Instead, our results suggest that Paleoamericans and contemporary native Americans both have Beringian ancestry." Reinhardt of McMaster said Hoyo Negro, which is now off-limits to the public because unauthorized divers have disturbed the artifacts, said the cathedral-like site is breathtakingly beautiful, with crystal-clear water surrounded by white limestone walls. But for Naia, who may have been seeking fresh water in the cavern and accidentally plunged into the sinkhole and could find no escape, it must have been a terrifying experience, he said. "When we're diving the site, it's spectacular, but the reality is this pit was a bit of a house of horrors in the sense that you would drop and perhaps survive the fall but not have any light. You wouldn't know the extent of the cavern. You'd be in a pool of water (at the bottom), kind of thrashing around trying to get out. "Yeah, it would have been a pretty awful way to die for sure." Source: Article

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-Tech

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 more frequently – in particular, in women," says Dr. Montag. ~ Universität Bonn press release, Aug 29 Source BioEdge, Image

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 like egg donation to allow people to have children without mitochondria defects. Voice of Russia, Reuters, USA Today. Source: Article, Image: flickr.com

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’ therapists. There is now a False Memory Syndrome in scientific literature and a False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Last year, Tonegawa and his team published a study in Nature showing how false memories could be implanted in mice. They first put mice in a chamber -- the scientists called it the Red Room -- and let the animals roam around exploring so they could build up a contextual memory of it. After a while, they gave the mice mild electric shocks to their feet and a blue light flashed in their brains delivered by a fiber-optic cable, implanting the memory that the Red Room was a dangerous place. The next day researchers put the mice in an entirely different chamber – the Black Room – and let them explore peacefully. The mice were not afraid until the light flashed. The mice froze again although they were not in the chamber where they had received a shock. Why? Memory is largely in the hippocampus, Tonegawa said, in a section called the dentate gyrus. Tonegawa, Steve Ramirez, a graduate student, and their colleagues identified the neurons there that were associated with experiential learning. Events stimulate neurons when a memory is stored. Scientists discovered earlier that shining a blue light at the cells had the same result, activating the cells through a light-sensitive protein called ChR2. It’s called optogenetic manipulation because genes are involved in setting off the neurons. Shining a blue light into the brains of the mice in the Black Room triggered the fear of being shocked as they had been in the Red Room. “It demonstrated for the first time that activation of the neurons during formation of memory is sufficient for an animal to do everything needed to recall their memory,” Tonegawa said. In a paper published this week in Science, the team went further. Mice were let into the first chamber, and nothing happened. They acquired the memory of the environment and that it was safe. Then the scientists put the mice in a second chamber and flashed the light which would have triggered memories of the first chamber. Then came a mild shock. The mice were placed back in the first chamber, where they had roamed safely before. The scientists flashed the blue light, and the mice immediately ran to a corner and crouched. Knowledge of the context -- the environment of the box -- was overpowered by the memory of the shock in the other chamber. When the mice were put in a third chamber unlike the first two and were not given the light flash, they were unafraid. They were not reminded of their previous experiences, real or imagined. The scientists had planted a false memory, and the mice believed it. Tonegawa said people who remember falsely are not lying; they completely believe what they say. People with false memories are among those who can beat polygraph machines. Even when confronted by facts, such as DNA evidence, they refuse to believe their memories are wrong. Elizabeth Loftus a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has done more than almost anyone in attacking false and implanted memories in courtrooms and who has appeared as an expert witness in many trials, including the McMartin trial, said the finding was “very exciting.” “It converges well with human data showing you can plant emotional memories into people’s minds,” she said. Tonegawa, who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1987, said there is a bright side to all this. Only humans have false memories; animals do not unless, like the mice at MIT, false memories are forced on them, he said. “Humans are the most amazing, imaginative animals,” he said. “We are thinking. Lots of things are going on. Humans are recording what happens and passing it on.” An imperfect memory, Tonegawa said, may be the price we pay for the imagination and creativity that makes us human. Contacts and sources: Inside Science News Service, By Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS Contributor. Source: Nano Patents And Innovations

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 conception provides for the involvement of the wife and husband who have problems with childbirth. Although this technology is helpful in solving this problem, it implicates, among other things, surrogate motherhood, sperm and egg donation, and also embryo donation.” All these “options”, especially the destruction of the excessive embryos and transferring embryos to surrogate mothers are strongly criticized by religious and public organizations, and also by scientists and governments. There are countries where a ban is put on surrogate motherhood. The Catholic Church, one of the main critics of the extracorporeal conception, says that an embryo is a personality. Hence, its transfer can be regarded as human trafficking, and any destruction of the embryo is none other than an abortion, the Catholic Church says. The Orthodox Church is strongly opposed to donor donation. There is a split of opinions on that score among scientists as well. A demographer and an anthropologist, Darya Khalturina, says: “ Embryo screening which is helpful in establishing the genetic causes of cancer is widespread today. Soon the DNA analysis will make it possible to understand what influences the outward appearance of newborns and what should be done to create a more beautiful child. Besides, embryo screening will make it possible to learn more about the impact of genes on the intellect”. There are scientists who believe that an extracorporeal conception may promote the return of the selection of human beings, the experiments with human embryos and the cloning of people. The British government is drafting a bill permitting the use of the genes of a third person during an extracorporeal conception. Future generations will face a changed structure of DNA. Ethical aspects are also of importance here. The legal status of the donor is not defined yet either. In fact, the donor is a third parent. , Source: Voice Of Russia,

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 based on D-amino acids and L-sugars. Such life forms could well be advanced versions of dinosaurs, if mammals did not have the good fortune to have the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroidal collision, as on Earth.” But not everyone was impressed with the notion of dinosaurs from space. “None of this has anything to do with dinosaurs,” wrote science author Brian Switek in the Smithsonian blog Dinosaur Tracking. “As much as I’m charmed by the idea of alien dinosaurs, Breslow’s conjecture makes my brain ache. Our planet’s fossil record has intricately detailed the fact that evolution is not a linear march of progress from one predestined waypoint to another. Dinosaurs were never destined to be. The history of life on earth has been greatly influenced by chance and contingency, and dinosaurs are a perfect example of this fact.” For further reading: American Chemical Society paper, ACS press release, Dinosaur Tracking blog, Source: Article

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 their results in diabetic patients. Although type 2 diabetes is initially treated with diet, exercise and tobacco avoidance, doctors try to restore normal levels of insulin by prescribing it when this fails. The number of cases diagnosed around the world continues to grow incredibly quickly: according to the United States Center Disease Control, cases in that country grew on average by 82% between 1995 and 2010. In Oklahoma, the number increased by 226%. The disease accounts for 90% of diabetes cases around the world, and its prevalence has increased in parallel with the obesity epidemic. Obesity is in fact thought to cause this disease which can in turn lead to heart disease, strokes and even limb amputation due to poor circulation. Source: Sciencedex, Image: flickr.com

Read More........→July 22, 2013