MERIDEN (AP) -- New DNA testing has solved the mysteries of a skull found in Waterbury in 1981 and a man fatally struck on Interstate 91 in Meriden in 2008, State Police said Friday.

State police and other officials announced the new findings at the state crime lab in Meriden, saying they identified the two men as people reported missing by their families.

Both men's identities were confirmed by DNA testing done over the past few weeks, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a state police spokesman.

Authorities said the skull belonged to Kenneth LaManna, of Waterbury, who was 30 when he went missing in 1980. The state's chief medical examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, said LaManna shot himself to death.

The new information in LaManna's case was developed after a detective in the state police Missing Persons Unit and a Waterbury police detective noticed similarities between the skull being found in 1981 and the missing person case of LaManna from 1980.

Forensic scientists then obtained DNA samples from the home of LaManna's mother, and they matched samples from the skull, state police said.

Police identified the man struck on the highway in 2008 as Phat Quy Mai, who was 50. Authorities have said he was struck while lying motionless on the roadway, and what exactly happened remains unclear.

Detectives couldn't identify Mai's body immediately after the accident, but sent information to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

State police received new information from the system in April and began investigating.

A detective met with Mai's family in Massachusetts and obtained DNA samples that matched samples from the man killed on the highway.

Continued here:
DNA testing solves two cold cases

The Delhi High Court today made public the DNA test results of veteran Congress leader N D Tiwari, confirming that he is the biological father of Rohit Shekhar, the youth who filed a paternity suit against him four years ago.

On a day of protracted drama in the court, a division bench first rejected Tiwaris plea to keep the report a secret and then remitted the case to Justice Reva Khetrapal, the judge who had earlier decided to open Tiwaris DNA test report and declare the result in open court. After their appeal was dismissed, Tiwaris counsel failed to appear in court.

The counsel for the 32-year-old Shekhar and his mother Ujjwala Sharma accompanied the judge into her chamber where the DNA report was desealed. They emerged smiling. The judge then declared the result in open court, saying: Tiwari is found to be the biological father of Rohit Shekhar and Ujjwala Sharma is found to be the biological mother.

Tiwari, who was not present in court, had his lawyer read out a statement in which he said that no one has the right to look into my private life. I have been a freedom fighter. I have the right to live according to my own wishes, the statement read.

The 87-year-old veteran Congress leader also said he bore no grudge against Shekhar.

Due to my simplicity, at this point of my age, my trusted people hatched a conspiracy against me in a planned way. I have no remorse against them. My sympathy is with Rohit Shekhar.

... contd.

Continued here:
DNA results out, Tiwari fathered Rohit

Your Diet Affects Your Grandchildren's DNA, Scientists Say

By: Christopher Wanjek, LiveScience Bad Medicine Columnist

Published: 07/27/2012 10:00 AM EDT on LiveScience

You are what you eat, the saying goes. And, according to two new genetic studies, you are what your mother, father, grandparents and great-grandparents ate, too.

Diet, be it poor or healthy, can so alter the nature of one's DNA that those changes can be passed on to the progeny. While this much has been speculated for years, researchers in two independent studies have found ways in which this likely is happening.

The findings, which involve epigenetics, may help explain the increased genetic risk that children face compared to their parents for diseases such as obesity and diabetes.

The punch line is that your poor dietary habits may be dooming your progeny, despite how healthy they will try to eat. [10 Worst Hereditary Conditions]

Epigenetics

Epigenetics refers to changes in gene expression from outside forces. Different from a mutation, epigenetic changes lie not in the DNA itself but rather in its surroundings -- the enzymes and other chemicals that orchestrate how a DNA molecule unwinds its various sections to make proteins or even new cells.

See the original post:
Your diet affects your grandchildren's DNA, studies say

27-07-2012 03:27 The Delhi High Court has rejected ND Tiwari's plea to keep his DNA report confidential. The results of the DNA test will be announced at 2:30 pm today. The former Governor of Andhra Pradesh and veteran Congress leader was taken to court by a 32-year-old man, Rohit Shekhar, who claims that Mr Tiwari is his biological father. Mr Tiwari says he is not. The DNA test was ordered by the court to settle the matter. Yesterday, Mr Tiwari, who is 87 years old, moved both the High Court and the Supreme Court seeking to keep his DNA test report confidential till the conclusion of hearing in the paternity suit against him. He was appealing against a July 20 High Court order which said the DNA test results would be made public today. For more log on to

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HC rejects ND Tiwari's plea to keep DNA results secret - NewsX - Video

The human family tree just got another mysterious branch, an African "sister species" to the heavy-browed Neanderthals that once roamed Europe.

While no fossilized bones have been found from these enigmatic people, they did leave a calling card in present-day Africans: snippets of foreign DNA.

There's only one way that genetic material could have made it into modern human populations.

"Geneticists like euphemisms, but we're talking about sex," said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, whose lab identified the foreign DNA in three groups of modern Africans.

These genetic leftovers do not resemble DNA from any modern humans. The foreign DNA also does not resemble Neanderthal DNA, which shows up in the DNA of some modern Europeans, Akey said. That means the newly identified DNA came from an unknown group.

"We're calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa," Akey said. He added that the interbreeding likely occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, long after some modern humans had walked out of Africa to colonize Asia and Europe, and about the same time Neanderthals were waning in Europe.

Akey said that present-day Europeans show no evidence of the foreign DNA, meaning the mystery people were likely confined to Africa.

The find offers more evidence that for thousands of years, modern-looking humans shared the Earth with evolutionary cousins that later died out. And whenever the groups met, they did what came naturally: They bred.

The once controversial idea that humans mated with other species is now widely accepted among scientists. In fact, hominid hanky-panky seems to have occurred wherever humans met others who looked kind of like them.

In 2010, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany announced finding Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of modern Europeans.

Link:
Sex with early mystery species of humans seen in DNA

After decades of digging, paleoanthropologists say modern humans arose in Africa some 200,000 years ago and all archaic species of humans then disappeared, surviving only outside Africa, as did the Neanderthals in Europe.

Geneticists studying DNA now say that, to the contrary, a previously unknown archaic species of human, a cousin of the Neanderthals, may have lingered in Africa until perhaps 25,000 years ago, coexisting with the modern humans and on occasion interbreeding with them.

The geneticists reached this conclusion, reported on Thursday, July 26, in the journal Cell, after decoding the entire genome of three isolated hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, hoping to cast light on the origins of modern human evolution.

But the finding is regarded skeptically by some paleoanthropologists because of the absence in the fossil record of anything that would support the geneticists' statistical calculations.

The geneticists, led by Joseph Lachance and Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, decoded the entire genomes of five men each from two Tanzanian tribes and the forest-dwelling pygmies of Cameroon. The genomes of the pygmies and the Tanzanians contained many short stretches of DNA with highly unusual sequences. Through mutation, the genomes of species that once had a common ancestor grow increasingly unlike one another.

Tishkoff's team interprets these divergent DNA sequences as genetic remnants of an interbreeding with an archaic species of

Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University, said the new claim of archaic and modern human interbreeding "is a further example of the tendency for geneticists to ignore fossil and archaeological evidence, perhaps because they think it can always be molded to fit the genetics after the fact."

Tishkoff said she agreed on the need for caution in making statistical inferences, and that there are other events besides interbreeding that can make a single DNA sequence look ancient. "But when you see it at a genomewide level, it's harder to explain away," she said.

Excerpt from:
DNA and fossils tell differing tales of human origins

by Brian Vastag - Jul. 26, 2012 11:06 PM Washington Post

The human family tree just got another -- mysterious -- branch, an African "sister species" to the heavy-browed Neanderthals who once roamed Europe.

While no fossilized bones have been found from these enigmatic people, they did leave a calling card in present-day Africans: snippets of foreign DNA.

There's only way one that genetic material could have made it into modern human populations.

"Geneticists like euphemisms, but we're talking about sex," said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose lab identified the foreign DNA in three groups of modern Africans.

These genetic leftovers do not resemble DNA from any modern-day humans. The foreign DNA also does not resemble Neanderthal DNA, which shows up in the DNA of some modern-day Europeans, Akey said. That means the newly identified DNA came from an unknown group.

"We're calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa," Akey said. He added that the interbreeding likely occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, long after some modern humans had walked out of Africa to colonize Asia and Europe, and around the same time Neanderthals were waning in Europe.

Akey said that present-day Europeans show no evidence of the foreign DNA, meaning the mystery people were likely confined to Africa.

The find offers more evidence that for thousands of years, modern-looking humans shared the Earth with evolutionary cousins who later died out. And when the groups met, they did what came naturally -- they bred.

The once controversial idea that humans mated with other species is now widely accepted among scientists. In fact, hominid hanky-panky seems to have occurred wherever humans met others who looked kind of like them.

Originally posted here:
DNA links humans, mystery species

ScienceDaily (July 26, 2012) Roofers and road construction workers who use hot asphalt are exposed to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the British Medical Journal Open shows that roofers have higher PAH blood-levels after working a shift and that these high levels of PAHs are linked with increased rates of DNA damage, and potentially with higher cancer risk.

"We've known for some time that roofers and road workers have higher cancer rates than the general population, but we also know roofers have a higher rates of smoking, alcohol use and higher UV exposure than the general population. It's been difficult to pinpoint the cause of higher cancer rates -- is it due to higher PAHs or is it due to lifestyle and other risk factors?" says Berrin Serdar, MD, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and assistant professor of environmental and occupational health at the Colorado School of Public Health.

Her study, completed with colleagues at the University of Miami, studied 19 roofers from four work sites in Miami-Dade County. Participants' urine samples, provided before and after a 6-hour shift, showed that after acute exposure to hot asphalt, PAH biomarkers were elevated. Overall, biomarkers of PAH exposure and oxidative DNA damage (8-OHdG) were highest among workers who didn't use protective gloves and workers who also reported work related skin burns, pointing to the role of PAH absorption through skin.

"PAHs are a complex mixture of chemicals some of which are known human carcinogens. They are produced by incomplete combustion of organic materials and exist in tobacco smoke, engine exhaust, or can come from environmental sources like forest fires, but the highest exposure is among occupational groups, for example coke oven workers or workers who use hot asphalt," Serdar says.

"We can't say with certainty that exposure to hot asphalt causes roofers' increased cancer rate," Serdar says, "but that possibility is becoming increasingly likely. Hot asphalt leads to PAH exposure, leads to higher PAH biomarkers, leads to increased DNA damage -- we hope to further explore the final link between DNA damage due to PAH exposure and higher cancer rates in this population."

Serdar and colleagues at the CU Cancer Center have initiated a wider study of roofers in the Denver metropolitan area. This study will simultaneously investigate air, blood, and urine levels of PAHs and their link to DNA damage in samples collected over a workweek.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado Denver. The original article was written by Garth Sundem.

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DNA damage in roofers due to PAH exposure, possible cancer link

26 July 2012 Last updated at 03:59 ET

Police in Mauritius have begun DNA testing of hotel staff working on the day Michaela McAreavey was murdered.

Detectives are at the former Legends hotel to collect samples from 216 employees.

These will be compared with traces left at the scene of the honeymoon suite where the 27-year-old from County Tyrone was killed in January 2011.

A new investigation team was set up after two former hotel workers were acquitted of murder earlier this month.

The BBC's Yasine Mohabuth said detectives were also taking fingerprints "for comparison with those found at the scene of crime".

Hotel director Brice Lunot told independent station Radio Plus: "The hotel management is relieved at the decision to reopen the investigation."

Mauritius foreign affairs minister, Arvin Boolell, has promised that "no stone will be left unturned" until these responsible for Mrs McAreavey's death were found.

Former hotel workers Sandip Moneea and Avinash Treebhoowoon were cleared of Mrs McAreavey's killing by a jury at the Supreme Court in the capital Port Louis.

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DNA tests in new Michaela inquiry