Change your DNA With Only Your Thoughts!

CrystalWizard sent is this very interesting piece.

researchers at ETH Zurich have an ongoing research project to construct a gene network that can be controlled by thoughts.

No Harvard Cave Baby.....Bad Translation.

I must have missed this one, but this is what the the online magazine Britian's Daily Mail ran recently:

• “Wanted: ‘Adventurous Neanderthal man — Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby

Geneticist George Church  the Harvard scientist in the middle of this mess says that the story was completely untrue!    Church said that the real story centers around an article he was interviewed for in the German magazine Der Spiegel in which he said that:

• such a cloning might theoretically be possible someday  

Whoever wrote the article for Britain's Daily Mail mis-translated the article and came to the conclusion that Church was actively looking for a woman to host a child from the DNA scrapings of Neanderthal bones.  

Church goes on to say that he wasn't even involved in the gene sequencing!  In fact, he goes on to say, his line of research is in how to use DNA to improve health, produce synthetic fuels, and other products, not cloning ancient humans!

Full Boston Herald article

Photo George M. Church

DNA's Biggest Asset? Middle Manament

It would appear that"junk DNA's" days are all but numbered.

Scientist have been puzzled for years by long strands of DNA that seem to have no purpose, doing noting at all. The standing opinion was that it was material from the early days of our evolution and has been "turned off".

Now after ten years of research, over 400 scientists in 32 laboratories from around the globe working on a project called Encode have announced that they have found what the "silent" DNA strands do. It seems the here to fore called "junk" DNA strands are the cell's "decision makers". These strands decide which genes are to be activated for protein production and which get turned off.

What is even more astounding is the amount of these decision maker DNA strands to specific genes! There are an average of a million for ever 23,000 genes or a ratio of apx. 50 - 1!

And even more astounding is treatments which traditionally have targeted genes. Now treatments that influence the decision makers to do the work for us.

For more, read Kent Sepkowts's article in the September 17th 2012 issue of Newsweek.

Sending Humanity to the Stars?

From an article in the Daily Galaxy , I was reading about a theme that runs through science fiction - sending humanity to the stars.  Of course once you let this cat out of the bag, you find that there are more questions than answers and all of them good.  But really there are the three most important and therefor the most troubling.  Where would you send humanity to first, exactly what would you send and the multi-pronged question how long would it take.

First to save space you can't send people.  DNA and self replicating robots would keep the payload fairly small.  But most of the job to build more machinery to grow and nurture the new life falls on robotics much more advanced than we have today.  So where would you send humanities's "ark"?   The Daily Galaxy article really drops back to basics in it's choice, to the target that was always the darling child destination when I was younger and that was Alpha Centauri our nearest stellar neighbor is only four light-years distant.  Alpha Centauri A is the same type of star as our Sun and may well have planets in the habitable zone.

But the "closeness" is relative.  With the present engine tech it would take our "seed ship" 80,000 years to arrive at the Centauri system.  Even with some of the promising technology for thrust such as the ion drive, it will still take a vast amount of time to move even to, for all intents and purposes, next door.

arrow in pic at top of page, shows the Centauri a system

read the complete Daily Galaxy article

Scientists build cyborg light-gathering antenna

Researchers at the University of Toronto have used a combination of synthesized DNA and semiconductors to create a nano-scale antenna that harnesses light. Ted Sargent, says that the tiny antenna consists of tiny semiconductors arranged in a cross-like shape, held together by DNA .

http://earthsky.org/energy/scientists-build-antenna-that-captures-light


"DNA is something you can synthesize in a lab, and you can program exactly the sequence that you want it to have." Sargent said. "And the DNA was designed to have two regions. One that was prone to stick to the semiconductors, and the other region which was able to stick to other DNA. Because it contains DNA, this antenna can, with a little startup help, self-assemble."

Confirmed? Early humans and Neanderthals interbred!

Somebody got some spainin to do! But according to a recent IO9 article:

• Part of the X chromosome found in people from outside Africa originally comes from our Neanderthal cousins.

This reversal of positions from Neanderthals and more "modern" homo-sapiens at the time come from research done at the Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal.

Neanderthals left Africa around 400,000 to 800,000 years ago and went extinct 30,000 years ago. Homo-Sapiens left Africa 80,000 to 50,000 years ago. This would give the two races at least 20 thousand years of overlap.

Now anyone reading so far is thinking....that doesn't prove anything or if anything such a short period is more than likely to lean towards no intermingling at all. But Dr LaBuda has additional evidence to bolster his case.

Again from the article:

• (During the last decade LaBuda) and his team had identified a piece of DNA in the human X chromosome that seemed out of place (possibly) from a non-human source.

Of course their suspicions were confirmed with the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010. 6,000 chromosomes were examined from donors of all major and minor population densities. All with the exception of populations from sub-Saharan Africa, had corresponding parts of the Neanderthal sequenced DNA, even widely separated populations in places like Australia.

IO9 article
This article links to Molecular Biology and Evolution which has even more fascinating information.

Where'd the Neanderthals go? Ask Your Great Great Ever so Great Granny

Yep NewScientist online mag writes that the Neanderthal genome does in fact reveal interbreeding with our early human ancestors. Even more startling is that scientists are now saying that the two species are so closely related as to be grouped as a single species!

The common ancestor of both groups migrated out of Africa about 500,000 years ago where as our more closely related ancestors remained in Africa to about 100,000 years ago when they also began spreading out. This second expansion might have put pressure on the already exsisting Neanderthal groups which died out about 28,000 years ago.

But in recent DNA sequencing project using material from Neanderthals reveals

• Any human whose ancestral group developed outside Africa has a little Neanderthal in them – between 1 and 4 per cent of their genome.....

This recombining of the DNA must have taken place about 45,000 years ago because all non African populations have the same amount of material in their genomes.

From the article:

• Archaeological evidence suggests that humans and Neanderthals overlapped for about 10,000 years in Europe and some fossils have even been interpreted as Neanderthal-human hybrids

read complete Newscientist article here> and Boing boing here

New Human Extinction Mystery ?

Recent studies of mitochondrial DNA (genetic material passed on solely through the mother) from the Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,000-year-old mummy found in an Alpine glacier, revealed something astonishing about this recent human ancestor. He is from a distinct genetic group that mysteriously disappeared. It is likely that no modern humans shares his genetic lineage. The scientists that are sequencing the iceman's dna say that there are significant genetic differences. Apparently, this genetic group is no longer present. We don't know whether it is extinct or it has become extremely rare.

First Artificial DNA Molecule Built

Chemists in Japan report development of the world's first DNA molecule made almost entirely of artificial parts. Clearing the way for nano-sized computers and gene therapy. The researchers used high-tech DNA synthesis equipment to sequence four entirely artificial bases inside the sugar-based framework of a DNA molecule. The result? A very stable structure resembling natural DNA.

Ahhh but I am not buying the "gene therapy" line for one second. And as for nano computers? Well what about the nano wires that can store 3 bits of information? That pretty much obsoletes the nano/dna logic path if I am not correct. I know I must be treading into the paranoid fringe here but I see a Dr. Moreauish second class life-form looming. This kind of tech is going to be drawn to money like moths to flame.

<Complete Science Daily Article>

Resurrecting the Extinct Tasmanian Tiger

From BBC news via IO9 comes this piece of Jurassic Parkian weirdness. It would seem that there are plans afoot to restore the extinct Australian marsupial, the Tasmanian Tiger, and reintroduce it to its' native original habitat.

Australian scientists extracted genetic material from a 100-year-old museum specimen, and put it into a mouse embryo to study how it worked.

This experiment suggests the marsupial's DNA and therefor the animal itself may not be lost. The Tasmanian tiger was hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 1900s. The last known specimen died in captivity in 1936, but several museums around the world still hold tissue samples preserved in alcohol.

Full details of the Australian study are published in the open-access journal PLoS One.

Tyrannosaurus Chicken?

Tyrannosaurus Rex or for that matter Dinosaur are fast becoming misnomers. It would appear that Tyrannosaurus Chicken is far closer to being true according to a new study. Chickens and dinosaurs may have more in common than was previously thought after researchers discovered close ties between the two creatures. The link between the bird and the Tyrannosaurus Rex has been revealed in a protein study dating back 88million years. Scientists from Harvard University discovered the link between chickens and the T-Rex when they analyzed the structure of tiny shreds of collagen taken from a fossilized dinosaur bone. Scientists were able to establish the relationship with a relatively high degree of confidence. The study determined that the fearsome dinosaur was closer to a chicken than a modern alligator. Yes, go ahead and say it....Chicken Rex

Genetic 'telepathy'? A bizarre new property of DNA

Shaun sends in this article from physorg.com:

Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together. The recognition — of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits — occurs in a way once regarded as impossible. In a recent study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA. The new findings thus may shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which underpin cancer, aging, and other health problems.