Monthly Archives: May 2013

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A dropped cigarette butt, a chewed-up piece of gum, a stray hair. Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg uses DNA she's picked up around New York City to generate 3-D portraits of those who left their trash behind. This rendering of a brown-eyed man of Eastern European descent came out of a cigarette butt Dewey-Hagborg found in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg/Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Dewey-Hagborg documents each sample, photographing it where she finds it. This cigarette butt was collected on Myrtle Avenue and Himrod Street in Brooklyn.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg/Heather Dewey-Hagborg

That cigarette butt, collected on Myrtle Avenue and Himrod Street in Brooklyn, showed characteristics of a brown-eyed female of European descent.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg/Heather Dewey-Hagborg

This wad of gum was collected on Wilson Avenue and Stanhope Street in Brooklyn.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg/Heather Dewey-Hagborg

The DNA collected from that wad of gum came from a brown-eyed male of Native American and South American decent.

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Litterbugs Beware: Turning Found DNA Into Portraits

WESTFIELD, Ind. - Felony burglary charges have been lodged against an ex-con after police said he left behind a mask with his DNA at a home he was burglarizing in Carmel.

It started as police were investigating the burglary of a home that was under construction on Pete Dye Boulevard in Carmel in November 2012, when officers located a camouflage mask on the basement floor of the ransacked construction site.

Construction workers told police that the mask didn't belong to any of them, so police sent the mask to the Indiana State Police crime lab so that DNA could be analyzed.

The DNA from the mask, which could include hair or saliva, led to a quick match in the nationwide Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which contains DNA profiles for millions of current and former convicts and others throughout the country.

In court papers, Westfield police said tests showed that the DNA from the mask belonged to Gary Fairchild, 29, who has been to prison twice for other burglaries in 2004 and again in 2009. State prison records show he was out on parole for those crimes until 2016.

Fairchild has now been charged with new felony counts of burglary and theft. He is behind bars at the Hamilton County Jail on a $10,000 bond. His trial is set for May 14 in Hamilton County Superior Court 3.

In addition to Young's DNA, police have obtained a search warrant for his cellphone records to see whether he sent or received calls or text messages near the most recent crime scene around the time that it was being burglarized.

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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DNA from dropped mask prompts arrest

Kristin E. Holmes, Inquirer Staff Writer Posted: Monday, May 13, 2013, 7:16 AM

Before he walked into an honors communications course at West Chester University, Grant Hubbard's ethnic identity was the stuff of skin color and oral history.

He was the white guy with European roots whose family came to the United States shortly after the Mayflower arrived.

Then science took over.

The swipe of a cotton swab inside his cheek and a DNA test indicated that he had ancestors from Europe, and elsewhere.

"My results came back 60 percent Southeast Asian," said Hubbard, 20, of Downingtown. "That's quite a bit different from what my family had always thought we were."

Hubbard is among 350 students who have participated in professor Anita Foeman's DNA Discussion Project, a course at the Chester County school that takes a scientific look at each student's genetic makeup.

The class is an effort to look at diversity in a way that shows connections instead of differences. Students set up websites and write papers about the results.

"It's much harder to totally write somebody off when you realize that 'I have some of that in me as well,' " Foeman said.

The results often shock students, prompting them to reexamine their identities, question their relatives, and start researching family history.

Read the original here:
DNA project surprises, enlightens West Chester students

Enrique Ibarra-Laclette, Claudia Anah Prez-Torres and Paulina Lozano-Sotomayor

The humped bladderwort plant (shown here in a scanning electron micrograph) is a voracious carnivore, with its tiny bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in bitty prey at great speed.

By Tia Ghose, LiveScience

One person's trash may be another person's treasure, but sometimes, trash is just trash.

So-called junk DNA, the vast majority of the genome that doesn't code for proteins, really isn't needed for a healthy organism, according to new research.

"At least for a plant, junk DNA really is just junk it's not required," said study co-author Victor Albert, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo in New York.

While the findings, published Sunday in the journal Nature, concern acarnivorous plant, they could have implications for the human genome as well. Genes make up only 2 percent of the human genome, and researchers have argued in recent years that the remaining 98 percent may play some hidden, useful role. [Image Gallery: Amazing Carnivorous Plants]

Trash or treasureFor decades, scientists have known that the vast majority of the genome is made up of DNA that doesn't seem to contain genes or turn genes on or off. The thinking went that most of this vast terrain of dark DNA consisted of genetic parasites that copy segments of DNA and paste themselves repeatedly in the genome, or that it consists of the fossils of once useful genes that have now been switched off. Researchers coined the termjunk DNAto refer to these areas.

"Nobody's really known what junk DNA does or doesn't do," Albert told LiveScience.

But in recent years, researchers have debated whether "junk" might be a misnomer and if this mysterious DNA might play some role. A massive project called ENCODE, which aimed to uncover the role of the 3.3 billion base pairs, orletters of DNA, in the human genome that don't code for proteins, found that in test tubes, about 80 percent of the genome seemed to have some biological activity, such as affecting whether genes turn on. Whether that translated to any useful or necessary function for humans, however, wasn't resolved.

See original here:
'Junk' DNA mystery solved: It's not needed

Enrique Ibarra-Laclette, Claudia Anah Prez-Torres and Paulina Lozano-Sotomayor

The humped bladderwort plant (shown here in a scanning electron micrograph) is a voracious carnivore, with its tiny bladders leveraging vacuum pressure to suck in bitty prey at great speed.

By Tia Ghose, LiveScience

One person's trash may be another person's treasure, but sometimes, trash is just trash.

So-called junk DNA, the vast majority of the genome that doesn't code for proteins, really isn't needed for a healthy organism, according to new research.

"At least for a plant, junk DNA really is just junk it's not required," said study co-author Victor Albert, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo in New York.

While the findings, published Sunday in the journal Nature, concern acarnivorous plant, they could have implications for the human genome as well. Genes make up only 2 percent of the human genome, and researchers have argued in recent years that the remaining 98 percent may play some hidden, useful role. [Image Gallery: Amazing Carnivorous Plants]

Trash or treasureFor decades, scientists have known that the vast majority of the genome is made up of DNA that doesn't seem to contain genes or turn genes on or off. The thinking went that most of this vast terrain of dark DNA consisted of genetic parasites that copy segments of DNA and paste themselves repeatedly in the genome, or that it consists of the fossils of once useful genes that have now been switched off. Researchers coined the termjunk DNAto refer to these areas.

"Nobody's really known what junk DNA does or doesn't do," Albert told LiveScience.

But in recent years, researchers have debated whether "junk" might be a misnomer and if this mysterious DNA might play some role. A massive project called ENCODE, which aimed to uncover the role of the 3.3 billion base pairs, orletters of DNA, in the human genome that don't code for proteins, found that in test tubes, about 80 percent of the genome seemed to have some biological activity, such as affecting whether genes turn on. Whether that translated to any useful or necessary function for humans, however, wasn't resolved.

Go here to see the original:
'Junk' DNA mystery solved

LEAMINGTON SPA, U.K., May 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- DNA Dynamics, Inc. (OTC PINK:DNAD) announces that it has been chosen by a large digital PC Publisher to bring one of its hugely successful PC games to the mobile space.

The game, which was unveiled in May 2010 and released in 2011, is a Real Time Strategy PC game and was the latest installment on a prestigious series which has an incredibly strong and loyal fan base globally. Now, DNA Dynamics, Inc. has been commissioned to pick up this complex game and port it to iPad and Android Tablets. The contract, which we are currently delivering via a Non-Disclosure agreement, will ensure that DNA will be writing good revenue in the first 2 quarters of 2013.

Ed Blincoe, commenting on the contract signing said "...having only just begun the new work for hire initiative having a contract signed so quickly is evidence that the company's new strategy is already working. Taking on as prestigious piece of IP is a huge honor for us."

DNA was commissioned to undertake this port after an extensive pitching process, which ended with DNA being successful in winning the contract.

DNA Dynamics, Inc. has recently undergone a strategy re-evaluation and has moved away from developing its own IP and is focusing on writing revenue through work for hire with third party publishers.

About DNA Dynamics, Inc.

Headquartered in Leamington Spa in the United Kingdom, DNA Dynamics is a worldwide developer and publisher of graphically rich, interactive entertainment currently delivered on iOS, Android, Apple Mac and PC.

For more information please email info@dnadynamics.net

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements, including information about management's view of DNA Dynamics, Inc.'s future expectations, plans and prospects. In particular, when used in the preceding discussion, the words "believes," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," or "may," and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Any statements made in this news release other than those of historical fact, about an action, event or development, are forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the results of DNA Dynamics, its subsidiaries and concepts to be materially different than those expressed or implied in such statements. Unknown or unpredictable factors also could have material adverse effects on DNA Dynamics' future results. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date hereof. DNA Dynamics cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Finally, DNA Dynamics undertakes no obligation to update these statements after the date of this release, except as required by law, and also takes no obligation to update or correct information prepared by third parties that are not paid for by DNA Dynamics.

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DNA Dynamics, Inc. taking Number 1 PC game to iPad and Android Tablets