Genetically-Modified Human Embryos One Step From Reality

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The Independent: IVF: First genetically-modified human embryos 'could be created in Britain within weeks'

Scientists are about to learn whether their research proposal has been approved by the fertility watchdog.

The first genetically-modified human embryos could be created in Britain within weeks according to the scientists who are about to learn whether their research proposal has been approved by the fertility watchdog.

Although it will be illegal to allow the embryos to live beyond 14 days, and be implanted into the womb, the researchers accepted that the research could one day lead to the birth of the first GM babies should the existing ban be lifted for medical reasons.

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CSN Editor: Welcome to the Brave New World.

A New Genetic Theory Sheds Light On Understanding Human Intelligence

Image: Oliver Sved/Shutterstock.

The Guardian: New genetic theory might pave way to understanding human intelligence

Scientists from Imperial College believe that intelligence may be influenced by two networks of genes, possibly controlled by a master regulatory system

British scientists believe they have made a huge step forward in the understanding of the mechanisms of human intelligence. That genetic inheritance must play some part has never been disputed. Despite occasional claims later dismissed, no-one has yet produced a single gene that controls intelligence.

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More News On The Discovery Of  "Intelligence Genes"

Scientists identify 'intelligence' genes and how to control them -- Daily Mail
Intelligence genes discovered by scientists -- The Telegraph
Scientists discover the parts of the brain which determine intelligence – and say they may be able to control them -- The Independent
Scientists have discovered brain networks linked to intelligence for the first time -- Science Alert
Genes linked to human intelligence discovered -- IBTimes
This Is Where Your Intelligence Lies In The Brain -- Health Aim
Researchers Identify Intelligence Gene Networks -- Sci-news
Gene Clusters In Brain Help Understand Human Intelligence -- Crazy Engineers
Intelligence Networks Discovered in Brain for the First Time -- Scientific Computing

Will 'Genetic Hard Drives' Revolutionize The Way Computers Work?

Currently data centres such as Google's shown here, rely on traditional hard drives. However, they could one day be replaced by the DNA drives revealed today 

The 'Genetic Hard Drive' That Could Store The Complete Works Of Shakespeare (And Revolutionize The Way Computers Work) -- Daily Mail 

* Same technique also used to store 26 second excerpt from Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech
* Breakthrough could have major implications for computer storage with DNA hard drives
* Could lead to drives that can store high definition version of every film and TV programme ever created in a teacup sized drive

A genetic storage device has been used to 'download' all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets on to strands of synthetic DNA.

Scientists were then able to decode the information and reproduce the words of the Bard with complete accuracy.

The same technique made it possible to store a 26 second excerpt from Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech and a photo of the Cambridgeshire laboratory where the work took place.

Researchers were also able to turn a copy of Watson and Crick's paper describing the nature of DNA into genetic code.

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My Comment: This is why I am fascinated by new technology.

Scheme To Clone Neanderthal Baby Disowned By Harvard Geneticist Who "Promoted" It

Lost In Translation: Harvard Geneticist Now Disowns Scheme To Clone Neanderthal Baby -- Evolution News 

The Boston Herald assures us that the geneticist who yesterday was advocating a project to clone a Neanderthal baby in fact never called for such a thing, nor is he seeking a likely and "adventurous female human" to bear the child.

It's all "Way too outlandish, and entirely untrue." A big misunderstanding. The story today is that this all stems from a mistranslation in Der Spiegel that got hyped by Britain's Daily Mail, then went global.

I commented here yesterday on the moral stupidity of the idea.

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Update: How the Viral Neanderthal-Baby Story Turned Real Science into Junk Journalism -- The Atlantic

 My Comment: So the story is now discredited .... but I suspect that if offered with the right inducements .... some women will probably decide to get involved in such an experiment.

Where Did Europe`s Jews Come From?

Jews throw stones at the sea to symbolically cast off their sin on September 20, 2009 in Nice, France, as part of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Jews of European origin are a mix of ancestries, with many hailing from tribes in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism and created an empire that lasted half a millennium, according to a gene study published on Thursday. 

Gene Study Settles Debate Over Origin Of European Jews -- France24 

AFP - Jews of European origin are a mix of ancestries, with many hailing from tribes in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism and created an empire that lasted half a millennium, according to a gene study published on Thursday.

The investigation, its author says, should settle a debate that has been roiling for more than two centuries. Jews of European descent, often called Ashkenazis, account for some 90 percent of the more than 13 million Jews in the world today. According to the so-called Rhineland Hypothesis, Ashkenazis descended from Jews who progressively fled Palestine after the Moslem conquest of 638 AD.

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My Comment: In short .... they came from the Middle East and the Caucasus.

Scientists Bring 500 Million-Year-Old Bacteria Back To Life

The new 'chimeric' bacteria has mutated rapidly - and some have become stronger and healthier than today's germs

Jurassic Park In A Petri Dish: Scientists Bring 500 Million-Year-Old Bacteria Back To Life - What Could Possibly Go Wrong? -- Daily Mail

* 'Frankenstein' germ spliced with gene from 500-million-year-old bacteria
* Bacteria is now thriving in lab
* Some of the 'chimeric' E Coli is now stronger than normal bacteria
* Scientists hope to 'restage' evolution
* Will answer questions about how and why organisms evolve

A 500 million-year-old bacteria has been brought back to life in a laboratory at Georgia Tech in an experiment with echoes of Jurassic Park's disastrous recreation of the dinosaurs.

The researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene and inserted it into a modern E Coli bacteria.

The 'Frankenstein' germ has thrived. In the lab, the creation has now lived through 1,000 generations.

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My Comment: It's only a matter of time before they start working on larger gene sequences.

The Reason Why Tomatoes Are Flavorless Today

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Your Tomatoes Are Flavorless, Right? Here's Why -- Time

There are two pieces of late-breaking news on the tomato beat this week. First of all, tomatoes have shoulders. Second, tomatoes taste lousy. If you're younger than 70, you probably already know about the lousy part. The shoulders are surely more of a surprise — but these are both key parts of a new study published in Science that explains what's going on in the sorry world of supermarket tomatoes and why they taste nothing like their sweet, flavorful cousins in the wild.

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My Comment: I disagree with the assertion that tomatoes taste lousy .... they taste great when mixed with something else.

New Layer of Genetic Information Found

The structure of a ribosome (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Francisco)

New Layer of Genetic Information Helps Determine How Fast Proteins Are Produced -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2012) — A hidden and never before recognized layer of information in the genetic code has been uncovered by a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) thanks to a technique developed at UCSF called ribosome profiling, which enables the measurement of gene activity inside living cells -- including the speed with which proteins are made.

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Genetic Manipulation Boosts Growth of Brain Cells

UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators have identified a genetic manipulation that increases the development of neurons in the brain during aging and enhances the effect of antidepressant drugs. (Credit: © rolffimages / Fotolia)

Genetic Manipulation Boosts Growth of Brain Cells Linked to Learning, Enhances Effects of Antidepressants -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) — UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators have identified a genetic manipulation that increases the development of neurons in the brain during aging and enhances the effect of antidepressant drugs.

The research finds that deleting the Nf1 gene in mice results in long-lasting improvements in neurogenesis, which in turn makes those in the test group more sensitive to the effects of antidepressants.

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70% Of British Men Are 'Related' To The Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Offer: iGENEA's website advertises its service matching customers to King Tut to see if they are ancestors

We've Got The Same Mummy! Up To 70% Of British Men Are 'Related' To The Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun -- The Daily Mail

Swiss company reconstructs King Tut's DNA profile from Discovery Channel documentary
Results show he belonged to 'haplogroup' common to half of Western European men
Claims disputed by fellow geneticists

A Swiss genetics company has claimed that up to 70 per cent of British men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, say they have reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel.

The results showed that 'King Tut' belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 per cent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share a common ancestor.

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150 Human Animal Hybrids Grown In UK Labs

Research centre: Warwick University has been growing animal human hybrids over the last three years

150 Human Animal Hybrids Grown In UK Labs: Embryos Have Been Produced Secretively For The Past Three Years -- The Daily Mail

Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.

The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.

The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.

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Human Genome Turns 10

Human Genome Turns 10: 5 Lessons Learned -- Live Science

Ten years ago this month, in what was heralded as the opening to a new era in human biology and medicine, two rival teams of scientists published their first official reports of the sequencing of the human genome.

"Humanity has been given a great gift," announced one of the two journals, Science, to publish the drafts.

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My Comment: Ten years already .... how the time flies.

'Giant' Step Toward Explaining Differences In Height Among People

Scientists have identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people. (Credit: iStockphoto/Stefanie Timmermann)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — An international collaboration of more than 200 institutions, led by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, the Broad Institute, and a half-dozen other institutions in Europe and North America, has identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people.

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Ancient Viral Invasion Shaped Human Genome

Scientists have discovered that viruses that "invaded" the human genome millions of years ago have changed the way genes get turned on and off in human embryonic stem cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Martin McCarthy)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2010) — Scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a biomedical research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and their colleagues from the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and Princeton University have recently discovered that viruses that 'invaded' the human genome millions of years ago have changed the way genes get turned on and off in human embryonic stem (ES) cells.

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The Search For Genes Leads To Unexpected Places

HUNTER Edward M. Marcotte and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have found hundreds of genes involved in human disorders. Ben Sklar for The New York Times

From New York Times:

Edward M. Marcotte is looking for drugs that can kill tumors by stopping blood vessel growth, and he and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin recently found some good targets — five human genes that are essential for that growth. Now they’re hunting for drugs that can stop those genes from working. Strangely, though, Dr. Marcotte did not discover the new genes in the human genome, nor in lab mice or even fruit flies. He and his colleagues found the genes in yeast.

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Scientists Reveal Gene-Swapping Technique To Thwart Inherited Diseases

Fertility treatment in action.
Photograph: Zephyr/SPL/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

From The Guardian:

Transfer of healthy material from fertilised to donated eggs could stop women passing on incurable illnesses

Scientists today offered new hope for women at risk of passing on certain inherited diseases to their children, in the form of a pioneering technique to move healthy genetic material from fertilised eggs into donated ones.

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Genetic Shock A Surprising Court Ruling In America May Loosen The Drug Industry’s Grip On Important Genes

From The Economist:

PERSONALISED medicine has proved an elusive dream. Since the decoding of the human genome, biotechnology companies have claimed that by matching a person’s genetic make-up with specialised treatments, they can tailor drugs to maximise benefits and minimise side effects. Alas, researchers have discovered that the link between a given person’s genetic make-up and specific diseases is much more complex than they had hoped. The tantalising vision remains out of reach.

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Ancient DNA Teased From Fossil Eggshells

Fragments of ancient moa eggshells. Eggshells are surprisingly good at protecting ancient DNA, and are often found at archaeological sites. Credit: University of Otago

From Cosmos:

PARIS: DNA from the fossilised eggshells of extinct birds - including iconic giants such as the moa and elephant bird - have been extracted for the first time, Australian scientists have reported.

The achievement marks a major step towards drafting the genome of birds wiped out by human greed, although the scientists warn this does not mean an extinct species should - or even can - be resurrected in the style of Jurassic Park.

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Cheap DNA Sequencing Will Drive A Revolution In Health Care

Credit: Leonard Lessin / Photo Researchers, Inc.

From Technology Review:

The dream of personalized medicine was one of the driving forces behind the 13-year, $3 billion Human Genome Project. Researchers hoped that once the genetic blueprint was revealed, they could create DNA tests to gauge individuals' risk for conditions like diabetes and cancer, allowing for targeted screening or preëmptive intervention. Genetic information would help doctors select the right drugs to treat disease in a given patient. Such advances would dramatically improve medicine and simultaneously lower costs by eliminating pointless treatments and reducing adverse drug reactions.

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Genetic Link Between Misery and Death Discovered; Novel Strategy Probes 'Genetic Haystack'

Interaction between nerves (red) and tumor cells (blue) in an ovary provides one way by which stress biochemistry signals can be distributed to sites of disease in the body. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Los Angeles)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — In ongoing work to identify how genes interact with social environments to impact human health, UCLA researchers have discovered what they describe as a biochemical link between misery and death. In addition, they found a specific genetic variation in some individuals that seems to disconnect that link, rendering them more biologically resilient in the face of adversity.

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