Daily Archives: January 6, 2015

Beautiful Mixture of DNA (my selection, 2015)
In this video, u will find the faces of mostly "classic" film stars; these facial features are getting harder to find these days for different race-mixing is going on worldwide. ( Note: This...

By: Francis Osuna

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Beautiful Mixture of DNA (my selection, 2015) - Video

SAC3 DNA BOMB
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By: MSMU22

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SAC3 DNA BOMB - Video

When Mark Gardiner looks at one of his bulls, he sees generations of high-quality steaks.

By having his animals DNA scanned by a gene-testing firm, Mr. Gardiner, a Kansas cattle breeder, can tell nearly from birth how many pounds they are likely to pack on per day and how much rich, marbled beef their carcasses will yield.

U.S. cattle ranches, using technology developed by companies including food-safety firm Neogen Corp. and animal-drug maker Zoetis Inc., are conducting more-sophisticated genetic tests like the ones that give Mr. Gardiner a glimpse of his animals future. Advances in DNA analysis help veterinarians and breeders identify prize animals whose offspring will yield a larger volume of tastier steaksfetching producers higher prices from Cargill Inc. and other beef processors. Testing also can save money on animal upkeep by culling cattle with less-desirable genes.

Cattle breeders say such tests allow them to assess a bulls genetic value with the same accuracy as if it already had sired up to 20 calves.

Proponents describe the genetic analysis tools as Moneyball meets Bonanza. This helps give you a higher batting average, said Mr. Gardiner, 53 years old, whose family runs Gardiner Angus Ranch in Ashland, Kan.

The American Angus Association estimates that about 20% of the purebred animals registered under its breed in 2014 were genetically tested, up from less than 1% in 2010, when the Angus-specific tests became available. Two-thirds of commercial cattle ranchers in the U.S. say their cow herds include animals with Angus genes, according to the association.

Companies specializing in animal genetics and food science, including Neogen and BeefTek Inc., have joined Cargill and Zoetis in investing in the technology, betting that it can revamp the way cattle are bred in the U.S., the worlds largest beef-producing nation. Cattle breeders pay up to $100 an animal to conduct such genetic tests, which typically involve sending a blood sample off to a lab.

Soaring cattle prices are helping fuel investment in beef genetics. The nations cattle herd has dwindled to its smallest size in 60 years after years of drought in the southern Great Plains parched pastures and drove up feed costs. Tight supplies of steers and heifers have meant record prices for young beef cattle in the U.S., and retail beef prices were projected to climb 11% to 12% in 2014, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.

Some ranchers, anticipating bigger payoffs, now aim to rebuild their herds with animals boasting better genes, said Luke Bowman, spokesman for Select Sires Inc., an Ohio company that provides dairy- and beef-cattle semen to breeders. That is helping drive a surge in prices for high-quality breeding animals, Mr. Bowman said, with bulls fetching as much as $250,000 now, compared with about $50,000 four years ago.

Farmers and ranchers for centuries have picked sires to produce well-bred offspring. About four decades ago, cattlemen and beef industry groups began compiling statistics on individual animals including weight at birth and rate of reproduction. But it often took years to gather enough data to understand whether a bull or heifer was likely to pass on favorable traits to its offspring.

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Farmers Deploy New DNA Test for Tastier Meat

For a skin cell to do its job, it must turn on a completely different set of genes than a liver cell -- and keep genes it doesn't need switched off. One way of turning off large groups of genes at once is to send them to "time-out" at the edge of the nucleus, where they are kept quiet. New research from Johns Hopkins sheds light on how DNA gets sent to the nucleus' far edge, a process critical to controlling genes and determining cell fate.

A report on the work appeared in the Jan. 5 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

"We discovered a DNA sequence and a specific set of protein tags that send DNA to the edge of the nucleus, where its genes get turned off," says Karen Reddy, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Picture the nucleus as a round room filled with double strands of DNA hanging in suspension as they are opened, closed, clipped, patched and read by proteins that come and go. At the edge of the nucleus, just inside its flexible walls, the lamina meshwork provides shape and support. But accumulating evidence from the past few years suggests that this meshwork is not just a structure, but is crucial to the cell's ability to turn large segments of genes off in one fell swoop. It's as though certain stretches of DNA feel a magnetic pull that keeps them clinging to the lamina in a state of "time-out," inaccessible to the proteins that could be working on them.

This method of turning off entire segments of the genome is particularly useful during development, when each cell in the embryo takes on a different fate by making a different set of proteins, even though each contains the same set of genes. What was unknown is what marks a particular DNA segment to be sent to the lamina for some "quiet time."

Reddy and her team began answering that question by comparing immature, embryonic, skinlike cells to mature immune system cells from mice. When they compared the segments of DNA clinging to the lamina in the two cell types, they found that differences occurred near genes that are used differently between the two. Additionally, the DNA regions that cling to the lamina were very consistent; there were no "grey areas" that were only sometimes associated with the lamina.

Next, the researchers chopped up the lamina-associated DNA segments and inserted individual pieces into the chromosomes of test cells, watching for the nearby chromosome segments to move to the lamina. They found that these segments were able to bind the protein YY1, and that YY1, when bound to a segment of DNA, was able to send the surrounding DNA to the lamina.

Reddy's team also discovered two molecular tags that are needed for DNA to move to the lamina. The tags are found on the histone proteins that DNA coils around and are a classic form of "epigenetic regulation" -- gene regulation that does not involve DNA sequence changes. It seems likely that YY1 is involved in summoning the proteins that attach the molecular tags to the histones. But whether YY1 has additional roles, like acting as a magnet to bring the DNA to the lamina, is unclear.

"This is the first time a specific combination of epigenetic modifications has been implicated in tethering DNA to the lamina," says Reddy. "Now we have a lot of interesting questions to answer about how different types of cells use this mechanism to regulate different sets of genes."

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When DNA gets sent to time-out: New details revealed in the coordinated regulation of large stretches of DNA

IMAGE:In mouse cells, the YY1 protein binds to a segment of DNA (green), leading it to attach to the lamina (red) at the edge of the nucleus. view more

Credit: Reddy Lab, Johns Hopkins Medicine

For a skin cell to do its job, it must turn on a completely different set of genes than a liver cell -- and keep genes it doesn't need switched off. One way of turning off large groups of genes at once is to send them to "time-out" at the edge of the nucleus, where they are kept quiet. New research from Johns Hopkins sheds light on how DNA gets sent to the nucleus' far edge, a process critical to controlling genes and determining cell fate.

A report on the work appeared in the Jan. 5 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

"We discovered a DNA sequence and a specific set of protein tags that send DNA to the edge of the nucleus, where its genes get turned off," says Karen Reddy, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Picture the nucleus as a round room filled with double strands of DNA hanging in suspension as they are opened, closed, clipped, patched and read by proteins that come and go. At the edge of the nucleus, just inside its flexible walls, the lamina meshwork provides shape and support. But accumulating evidence from the past few years suggests that this meshwork is not just a structure, but is crucial to the cell's ability to turn large segments of genes off in one fell swoop. It's as though certain stretches of DNA feel a magnetic pull that keeps them clinging to the lamina in a state of "time-out," inaccessible to the proteins that could be working on them.

This method of turning off entire segments of the genome is particularly useful during development, when each cell in the embryo takes on a different fate by making a different set of proteins, even though each contains the same set of genes. What was unknown is what marks a particular DNA segment to be sent to the lamina for some "quiet time."

Reddy and her team began answering that question by comparing immature, embryonic, skinlike cells to mature immune system cells from mice. When they compared the segments of DNA clinging to the lamina in the two cell types, they found that differences occurred near genes that are used differently between the two. Additionally, the DNA regions that cling to the lamina were very consistent; there were no "grey areas" that were only sometimes associated with the lamina.

Next, the researchers chopped up the lamina-associated DNA segments and inserted individual pieces into the chromosomes of test cells, watching for the nearby chromosome segments to move to the lamina. They found that these segments were able to bind the protein YY1, and that YY1, when bound to a segment of DNA, was able to send the surrounding DNA to the lamina.

Reddy's team also discovered two molecular tags that are needed for DNA to move to the lamina. The tags are found on the histone proteins that DNA coils around and are a classic form of "epigenetic regulation" -- gene regulation that does not involve DNA sequence changes. It seems likely that YY1 is involved in summoning the proteins that attach the molecular tags to the histones. But whether YY1 has additional roles, like acting as a magnet to bring the DNA to the lamina, is unclear.

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When DNA gets sent to time-out

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) A Utah judge will allow prosecutors to use DNA evidence in the case of a doctor accused in the death of his ex-wife, but only to rule out other suspects.

Judge James Blanch said Tuesday tests were inconclusive as to who the small amount of DNA collected from the crime scene belonged to.

Lawyers for 51-year-old John Brickman Wall wanted the evidence to be tossed out, saying there wasn't enough to draw conclusions. Von Schwedler was found drowned in an overflowing bathtub in 2011, having overdosed on Xanax, a drug she didn't have a prescription for.

Blanch also decided Tuesday that prosecutors could introduce evidence they say shows Wall filled a prescription for the drug shortly before his ex-wife's death.

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DNA evidence allowed in murder case against doctor