Daily Archives: April 11, 2013

Panasonic Develops Chip That Sequences DNA in an Hour
It can take up to a week to sequence DNA but a new chip developed by Panasonic can do it in a fraction of the time.

By: NewsyScience

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Panasonic Develops Chip That Sequences DNA in an Hour - Video

DNA Vergadering 08-04-2013

By: dnasuriname

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DNA Vergadering 08-04-2013 - Video

Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog
Shannon O #39;Grady Applied Animal Biology Video Presentation.

By: Shannon O #39;Grady

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Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog - Video

DNA Proof of 6" Tall Extraterrestrial: 2013
( HELP get this out on Twitter and Facebook ))) Six inch Tall Alien believed to be 5 to 7 years old was found in the Atacama Desert in Chile a few years ag...

By: goforitrandy

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DNA Proof of 6" Tall Extraterrestrial: 2013 - Video

Whether it's an assault or a relatively minor offense such as destroying a library book, Coloradans convicted of a misdemeanor would have to open wide and say "aaagh," should lawmakers pass a requirement that the state collect from them an oral DNA sample.

In what's billed as an ambitious effort to solve cold cases, exonerate those wrongfully convicted and quell future crimes, a Democratic state lawmaker wants to require that individuals convicted of Class 1, Class 2 or Class 3 misdemeanors must submit a DNA sample to be stored in a statewide database system.

But this effort to expand DNA collection to misdemeanor convictions has raised concerns about privacy issues and the rationale behind such a requirement.

"DNA is the 21st century fingerprint," said Rep. Dan Pabon, a Denver Democrat, who is the sponsor of the legislation that's set to be heard before a House committee Thursday. " We have become so sophisticated in our technology and science, we can without a shadow of a doubt link someone physically to a crime."

Already in Colorado, individuals arrested on a felony charge and some misdemeanors involving unlawful sexual conduct are required to provide the state with a DNA sample. And those convicted of a misdemeanor under the proposed legislation would have to pay a $128 fee to cover the costs of the sample.

Late Wednesday afternoon, after The Denver Post reported about Pabon's bill online, the sponsor said he would offer an amendment to the measure that would only require Class 1 misdemeanors be swabbed.

However, though Pabon is targeting most misdemeanor offenses, his legislation does not require those convicted of misdemeanor traffic offenses such as DUIs to submit oral samples.

"We don't have the statistics that demonstrate just because you're drinking and driving that you have a propensity to commit more serious crimes," Pabon said. "With respect to theft crimes, assault crimes, those involving the objectification of a person ... those types of crimes indicate that you're going to commit more serious crimes."

Denise Maes, public policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said it's a false assumption to conclude that any person who commits a low-level misdemeanor will commit more serious crimes in the future.

"This encroaches on an individual's privacy," said Maes, who will offer testimony on Thursday in opposition to the bill. "Further, listen carefully to the rationale supporting this bill: 'Collecting DNA helps solve crime.' There is no end to this mission. One may facetiously say 'just chip us at birth,' but in reality this is precisely where the rationale of the proponents naturally leads us to."

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Misdemeanor convictions in Colorado could call for DNA swab

NEW YORK (AP) A letter that scientist Francis Crick wrote to his son about his Nobel Prize-winning DNA discovery was sold to anonymous buyer at a New York City auction on Wednesday for a record-breaking $5.3 million.

The price, which far exceeded the $1 million pre-sale estimate, topped $6 million when the commission is included, according to Christie's. The price was a record for a letter sold at auction, Christies said, eclipsing an Abraham Lincoln letter that sold in April 2008 for $3.4 million including commission.

On Thursday, the molecular biologists 1962 Nobel Prize medal in physiology or medicine will be offered by Heritage Auctions, which estimates it could fetch over $500,000.

The items are among a dozen artifacts Cricks heirs are selling to benefit scientific research.

In the March 19, 1953, handwritten letter to his 12-year-old son, Michael, Crick describes his discovery of the structure of DNA as something beautiful. The note tells his son how he and James Watson found the copying mechanism by which life comes from life. It includes a simple sketch of DNAs double helix structure, which Crick concedes he cant draw very well.

The seven-page letter, written to his son in boarding school, concludes: Read this carefully so that you will understand it. When you come home we will show you the model. Lots of love, Daddy.

Crick, who died in 2004 at age 88, was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Watson and Maurice Wilkins. He spent the latter decades of his career doing brain research at the Salk Institute, where he became a professor in 1977.

Michael Cricks daughter Kindra said the family decided to sell the medal and other items because they had been in storage for 50 years, first locked up in a room of her grandfathers La Jolla, Calif., home and later in a safe deposit box.

They chose to sell them now because it coincides with the 60th anniversary of the historic discovery and 50 years since he received the award, she said.

Half the proceeds from the Christies sale will benefit the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, the granddaughter said. Twenty percent of the proceeds from the Heritage Auctions sale will go to the new Francis Crick Institute in London, a medical research institute slated to open in 2015.

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DNA discoverer's letter sells for more than $5M

At left, metallized DNA (red) forms letters on a graphene surface. Treatment with oxygen plasma etches the shape of the letters into the graphene, right. Credit: ZHONG JIN

DNA's unique structure is ideal for carrying genetic information, but scientists have recently found ways to exploit this versatile molecule for other purposes: By controlling DNA sequences, they can manipulate the molecule to form many different nanoscale shapes.

Chemical and molecular engineers at MIT and Harvard University have now expanded this approach by using folded DNA to control the nanostructure of inorganic materials. After building DNA nanostructures of various shapes, they used the molecules as templates to create nanoscale patterns on sheets of graphene. This could be an important step toward large-scale production of electronic chips made of graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon with unique electronic properties.

"This gives us a chemical tool to program shapes and patterns at the nanometer scale, forming electronic circuits, for example," says Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and a senior author of a paper describing the technique in the April 9 issue of Nature Communications.

Peng Yin, an assistant professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School and a member of Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, is also a senior author of the paper, and MIT postdoc Zhong Jin is the lead author. Other authors are Harvard postdocs Wei Sun and Yonggang Ke, MIT graduate students Chih-Jen Shih and Geraldine Paulus, and MIT postdocs Qing Hua Wang and Bin Mu.

Most of these DNA nanostructures are made using a novel approach developed in Yin's lab. Complex DNA nanostructures with precisely prescribed shapes are constructed using short synthetic DNA strands called single-stranded tiles. Each of these tiles acts like an interlocking toy brick and binds with four designated neighbors.

Using these single-stranded tiles, Yin's lab has created more than 100 distinct nanoscale shapes, including the full alphabet of capital English letters and many emoticons. These structures are designed using computer software and can be assembled in a simple reaction. Alternatively, such structures can be constructed using an approach called DNA origami, in which many short strands of DNA fold a long strand into a desired shape.

However, DNA tends to degrade when exposed to sunlight or oxygen, and can react with other molecules, so it is not ideal as a long-term building material. "We'd like to exploit the properties of more stable nanomaterials for structural applications or electronics," Strano says.

Instead, he and his colleagues transferred the precise structural information encoded in DNA to sturdier graphene. The chemical process involved is fairly straightforward, Strano says: First, the DNA is anchored onto a graphene surface using a molecule called aminopyrine, which is similar in structure to graphene. The DNA is then coated with small clusters of silver along the surface, which allows a subsequent layer of gold to be deposited on top of the silver.

Once the molecule is coated in gold, the stable metallized DNA can be used as a mask for a process called plasma lithography. Oxygen plasma, a very reactive "gas flow" of ionized molecules, is used to wear away any unprotected graphene, leaving behind a graphene structure identical to the original DNA shape. The metallized DNA is then washed away with sodium cyanide.

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Folded DNA templates allow researchers to precisely cut out graphene shapes which could be used in electronic circuits

NEW YORK (AP) A letter that scientist Francis Crick wrote to his son about his Nobel Prize-winning DNA discovery was sold to anonymous buyer at a New York City auction on Wednesday for a record-breaking $5.3 million.

The price, which far exceeded the $1 million pre-sale estimate, topped $6 million when the commission is included, according to Christie's. The price was a record for a letter sold at auction, Christie's said, eclipsing an Abraham Lincoln letter that sold in April 2008 for $3.4 million including commission.

On Thursday, the molecular biologist's 1962 Nobel Prize medal in physiology or medicine will be offered by Heritage Auctions, which estimates it could fetch over $500,000.

The items are among a dozen artifacts Crick's heirs are selling to benefit scientific research.

In the March 19, 1953, handwritten letter to his 12-year-old son, Michael, Crick describes his discovery of the structure of DNA as something "beautiful." The note tells his son how he and James Watson found the copying mechanism "by which life comes from life." It includes a simple sketch of DNA's double helix structure, which Crick concedes he can't draw very well.

The seven-page letter, written to his son in boarding school, concludes: "Read this carefully so that you will understand it. When you come home we will show you the model. Lots of love, Daddy."

Crick, who died in 2004 at age 88, was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Watson and Maurice Wilkins. He spent the latter decades of his career doing brain research at the Salk Institute, where he became a professor in 1977.

Michael Crick's daughter Kindra said the family decided to sell the medal and other items because they had been in storage for 50 years, first locked up in a room of her grandfather's La Jolla, Calif., home and later in a safe deposit box.

They chose to sell them now because it "coincides with the 60th anniversary of the historic discovery and 50 years since he received the award," she said.

Half the proceeds from the Christie's sale will benefit the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, the granddaughter said. Twenty percent of the proceeds from the Heritage Auctions sale will go to the new Francis Crick Institute in London, a medical research institute slated to open in 2015.

Continued here:
DNA discoverer's letter sells for $5.3M, a record