Monthly Archives: February 2017

Finding our way around DNA -- ScienceDaily Science Daily A new tool has been developed that maps functional areas of the genome to better understand disease. and more »

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Finding our way around DNA -- ScienceDaily - Science Daily

February 14, 2017 9:21am NASDAQ:IBB

From Jon Markman: It really is a brave new world. Not long ago, a group of prominent scientists announced plans for a project to create synthetic human DNA from scratch.

That seems appropriate for Valentines Day. If you dont like your lover, one day you might just be able to design a new one.

The project will be led by synthetic biologists Jef Boeke, of the Langone Medical Center at New York University, and George Church, of Harvard Medical School. And it will take up where the previous project to read the human genome ended.

In 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was completed. It was supposed to open the door to countless new treatments and cures for illnesses that had plagued humans for centuries. It didnt quite work out that way. It seems understanding the relationship between genes and illness is more complex than scientists originally thought.

The Human Genome Project-write (HGP-write), as the name implies, will attempt to synthetically write human DNA code. The idea is that writing and understanding genetic code made from scratch will help scientists learn more about those complex gene relationships.

And while creating the building blocks for human life in a lab may seem like science fiction, there is some precedent.

In 2010, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute created bacteria controlled by a synthetic genome, effectively turning code back into life. HGP-write will be like that experiment, only on a much bigger scale.

Writing DNA is tedious and expensive work. It involves precisely manipulating tiny amounts of chemicals and a DNA molecule.

These chemicals are sugary building blocks designated A, T, C and G and they must be added in the correct amounts and the proper order hundreds of times to change the structure of DNA.

Boeke and Church believe completing HGP-write will shrink development costs for DNA fabrication by a factor of one thousand. If true, that could actually lead to all of the revolutionary treatments promised by the original Human Genome Project. Yet, pesky ethical questions remain.

These are heightened by Churchs own colorful and controversial history. In his 2012 book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, he wrote about a world where humans with genomes made in the lab become immune to all viruses. According to Church this could be done simply by removing the host material from our genes that viruses need to replicate. And thats just a start. Hes been vocal about his efforts to resurrect the wooly mammoth now that perfectly preserved DNA material from the prehistoric beast has been recovered. Church is also using CRISPR, a gene editing tool he helped develop, to alter pig genes so that their organs can be transplanted into humans. As for humans, hes not shy about his cradle-to-grave outlook.

Hes aggressively in favor of gene editing to avoid potential birth defects and hes working with gene therapies to reverse the aging process. It doesnt help that when hes pressed about ethics, he demurs to comparisons to the industrial revolution. This type of talk often lands scientists in hot water. And Church has been cooked so many times that he should have developed a rubbery exterior by now. Hell need it.

It should take $100 million and ten years to create the human genome from scratch. If the project is successful, scientists say theyll restrict potential use cases to the petri dish to avoid ethical considerations. Thats not exactly Mary Shelleys Frankenstein but it is one giant step closer to Aldous Huxleys Brave New World.

As is often the case in biotech, the most reliable investment for investors in this space will be the proverbial picks and shovels: The makers of lab equipment and disposables, like Becton Dickinson and Co. (BDX), Teleflex Inc. (TFX) and Cantel Medical Corp. (CMD).

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The iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index ETF (NASDAQ:IBB) rose $0.50 (+0.17%) in premarket trading Tuesday. Year-to-date, IBB has gained 8.07%, versus a 4.10% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

IBB currently has an ETF Daily News SMART Grade of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #2 of 36 ETFs in the Health & Biotech ETFs category.

This article is brought to you courtesy of Money And Markets.

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Biotech's Next Big Catalyst Could Be Synthetic DNA - ETF Daily News (blog)

February 13, 2017 DNA double helix. Credit: public domain

Sardinia sits at a crossroads in the Mediterranean Sea, the second largest island next to Sicily. Surrounded by sparkling turquoise waters, this Mediterranean jewel lies northwest of the toe of the Italian peninsula boot, about 350 kilometers due west of Rome.

For evolutionary biologists, islands are often intriguing, geographically isolated pockets with unique populations that can be ripe for exploration.

Now, in a new study appearing in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution an international team led by geneticist Anna Olivieri from the University of Pavia tackles a highly interesting question: what were the origins of the Sardinian population in the context of European prehistory and ancient human migrations?

The authors analyzed 3,491 modern, whole mitochondrial DNA genomes from Sardinia (which are only passed down maternally). These were compared with 21 samples of ancient mitogenomes from the island, a large panel of non-Sardinian mitogenomes -and even tzi (the nickname of Europe's oldest natural mummy, the 3,300 BCE-year old "Tyrolean Iceman") -to better understand their origins.

Their findings show Sardinia as an outlier in the general European genetic landscape. Almost 80 percent of modern Sardinian mitogenomes belong to branches that cannot be found anywhere else outside the island. Thus, they were defined as Sardinian-Specific Haplogroups (SSHs) that most likely arose in the island after its initial occupation. Almost all SSHs coalesce in the post-Nuragic, Nuragic and Neolithic-Copper Age periods. However, some rare SSHs display age estimates older than 7,800 years ago, the postulated archeologically-based starting time of the Neolithic in Sardinia.

"Our analyses raise the possibility that several SSHs may have already been present on the island prior to the Neolithic," said prof. Francesco Cucca, from the Institute of Genetic and Biomedical Research (IRGB), at the CNR in Cagliari (Sardinia).

The most plausible candidates would include haplogroups K1a2d and U5b1i1, which together comprise almost 3 percent of modern Sardinians, and possibly others. Such a scenario would not only support archaeological evidence of a Mesolithic occupation of Sardinia, but could also suggest a dual ancestral origin of its first inhabitants. K1a2d is of Late Paleolithic Near Eastern ancestry, whereas U5b1i1 harbours deep ancestral roots in Paleolithic Western Europe.

This work provides evidence that contemporary Sardinians harbour a unique genetic heritage, as a result of their distinct history and relative isolation from the demographic upheavals of continental Europe. Anna Olivieri stresses: "It now seems plausible that human mobility, inter-communication and gene flow around the Mediterranean from Late Glacial times onwards may well have left signatures that survive to this day. Some of these signals are still retained in modern Sardinians."

"Although in the past the stress has often been on the spread of the Neolithic, genetic studies too are beginning to emphasize the complexity and mosaic nature of human ancestry in the Mediterranean, and indeed in Europe more widely," concludes prof. Antonio Torroni, from the University of Pavia. "Future work on ancient DNA should be able to test directly to what extent this more complex model is supported by genetic evidence, and whether our predictions of Mesolithic ancestry in contemporary Sardinians can be sustained."

Explore further: Hair from mummy's clothes provides insights into red deer lineage

More information: Anna Olivieri, et al, Mitogenome Diversity in Sardinians: a Genetic Window onto an Island's Past, Molecular Biology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msx082

Genetic analysis of Neolithic deer hair from Italian Alps mummy's clothes ties deer population to modern day western European lineage, in contrast to the eastern lineage found in the Italian alps today, according to a study ...

A genomic analysis of 28 dog breeds has traced the genetic history of the remarkable Fonni's Dog, a herd guardian endemic to the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The results, published in the journal Genetics, reveal that ...

A study was published last week on the DNA of Helicobacter pylori, the pathogen extracted from the stomach of tzi, the ice mummy who has provided valuable information on the life of Homo Sapiens.

The Iceman mummy, also known as Otzi, is about 5,300 years old. Scientists studying his body since his discovery in the Italian Alps in 1991 have learned many things, including the cause of his death (an arrow to the back) ...

One look at Sardinia's white-sand beaches and turquoise water would lead you to assume that this part of the world is devoted entirely to idyllic getaways and sun-filled vacations. You'd never guess that the island's population ...

The first ancient human genome from Africa to be sequenced has revealed that a wave of migration back into Africa from Western Eurasia around 3,000 years ago was up to twice as significant as previously thought, and affected ...

(Phys.org)A team of researchers at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences has found that rhesus monkeys can pass the mirror self-awareness test if they are first taught how mirrors work. In their paper published ...

University of Georgia researchers have confirmed that becoming a parent brings about more than just the obvious offspringit also rewires the parents' brain.

Male guppies pay a high cost for their sexual harassment of female guppies including much higher mortality rates a new study from Macquarie University has found.

Scientists at the University of Wrzburg have generated new insights into the intricate molecular underpinnings of ubiquitin signaling. Their results may provide new avenues for cancer therapy.

The protein that helps the sperm and egg fuse together in sexual reproduction can also fuse regular cells together. Recent findings by a team of biomedical researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Argentina, ...

Sardinia sits at a crossroads in the Mediterranean Sea, the second largest island next to Sicily. Surrounded by sparkling turquoise waters, this Mediterranean jewel lies northwest of the toe of the Italian peninsula boot, ...

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An ancient people of Sardinia were once called the Shardana...... as in Shar-DAN-a. They were one of the 'Sea Peoples' that plyed the Mediterranean during the Greek Dark Ages, as were the Danoi or DAN-oi of Mycenea and the Dan-nan-oi or DAN-nan-oi of Thutmose's Egypt and the Israeli Tribe of Dan from Tel-Dor in Israel. All were of the 'Danites' and emanated from Israel about the time of the Exodus in the Torah, about 1500 BCE. There is physical archaeology indicating all of this. For further distant antecedants, one need look at pre-Exodus Hebrews working as slaves in Egypt's 'Valley of Terror'. Cave inscriptions there bear some of first uses of modern alphabet.

Pronunciations in southern Europe and the Levant seem all relative to varying forms of pronunciation of alphabetic or abjadic letters. Russia, as remote as it seems, got much of its culture from ancient Dacia which is where also later on the Kievan' Rus.......Ukraine, got started. The French suffix 'in' has its vowel sounding almost like a flat 'aanh'. These differing vowel pronunciations spread all across cultures from ancient Iberia to Capodoccia to Assyria to Ur across not only distance but also time measured in millennia. The Hebrew's ancient alphabet or 'alef-bet' came from Linear-A script copied into Heiratic in Egypt with its 600 letters whose' difficulty in learning was a purposeful act to prevent the common folk from educating themselves. That those secretive fuedal societies like the Hittites and Egyptian Pharoanics left so little behind seems a tribute to their shared interest in looting their present, uncaring of future progress.

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Looking at Sardinian DNA for genetic clues to an island'sand ... - Phys.Org

New twin-splitting technology is being put to the test for the first time ever in a Hub courtroom this week, and Suffolk prosecutors hope the new-age science can finally help solve a pair of rapes that occurred nearly 15 years ago.

An old DNA test couldnt separate the chief suspect in the case, Dwayne McNair, from his identical twin brother, Dwight McNair. That issue put Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley in a tight spot, and in 2014 he temporarily dropped charges stemming from a pair of 2004 rapes so he could see if a new test developed in Germany would work.

Prosecutors say it did, and that it conclusively shows that Dwayne McNairs DNA was in a condom he allegedly used during the crime. That potentially damning piece of evidence only exists because a quick-thinking woman McNair is accused of raping kept the condom and brought it to authorities.

Dwayne McNair was eventually re-indicted, and now Conleys office must prove that the test is worthy of being used in a Massachusetts court.

After going through the extensive methodology used by Germany-based Eurofins Scientific to differentiate the McNair twins yesterday, Suffolk prosecutor David Deakin asked his expert how likely it is that Dwights DNA was found.

The scenario is extremely unlikely, said Dr. Burkhard Rolf, head of DNA services Eurofins.

But Robert Tobin, Dwayne McNairs defense attorney, went on the offensive, arguing that the science is relatively new, completely untested by other scientists and has never been considered in any courtroom anywhere.

This has never been entered into evidence in any court in the whole world, right? Tobin asked.

Not yet, Rolf said.

The $120,000 test is vital to the rape case, and if Superior Court Judge Linda Giles allows a jury to consider its results, it would be akin to an admission. Thats why a line of experts are expected to testify about the merits and faults of the test in the coming days.

It has not been accepted in the forensic community, has it? Tobin asked Rolf.

What does accepted mean? Rolf responded. It has not been performed very often, but that doesnt mean it hasnt been accepted.

The test has been published in one peer-reviewed journal, and according to Rolf no one has debunked the science.

But there is no clear answer as to whether Massachusetts will break the mold and allow this science into court.

Its an interesting experiment, Tobin said, his arms full of files as he left the courtroom. Its just not ready for prime time.

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McGovern: DA fighting for twin's DNA test to be accepted in trial - Boston Herald