Daily Archives: May 14, 2020

A discarded cigarette butt came back to burn a suspected thief.

More than three years after the alleged crime, Brandon S. Ward-Smith, 31, of Butler is facing criminal charges.

State police last month charged Ward-Smith, a felon, with breaking into four vehicles in Summit Township on Feb. 5 and 6, 2017.

During their initial investigation, police said, they took reports of four thefts from vehicles at two homes each on Kemar Drive and Saxonburg Road. The four homes are less than one mile apart and just a minute's travel time by vehicle.

The proximity of the homes and because all of the thefts occurred within one day of each other led police to suspect the same person was involved.

The loot taken from the vehicles included jewelry, a gift card, a folding knife and currency valued collectively at a little more than $400.

Investigators at one home, police said, found a fresh cigarette in the driveway next to the vehicle that had been ransacked. The potential evidence was collected and later sent to the state police crime lab in Westmoreland County.

On March 16, 2018, police got good news: there was a hit on the DNA taken from the cigarette.

Specifically, investigators said, the Combined DNA Index System known as CODIS, an FBI database of criminal suspects' biometric data, had matched the DNA to a known offender Ward-Smith.

Convicted felons are required to submit DNA for the database.

Ward-Smith has a relatively lengthy criminal history, according to court records, that includes felony convictions for conspiracy to possess with intent to deliver a controlled substance in 2015 and retail theft in 2017.

But when police got word of the hit, the defendant's whereabouts were unknown. That changed, however, when he got picked up and placed in the Butler County Prison for a probation violation in June 2018.

Police subsequently interviewed him at the prison. He denied he had anything to do with the thefts from the vehicles. He also claimed he was unfamiliar with Kemar Drive where the cigarette butt, allegedly with his DNA on it, was found.

This is an excerpt of an article appearing in Thursday's Butler Eagle. To read the full story, pick up today's newspaper or subscribe online.

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DNA from discarded cigarette leads to arrest in 3-year-old case - Butler Eagle

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are popular drugs that treat depression by increasing the amount of a neurotransmitter called serotonin in the brain. But when a common SSRI known as sertraline is taken by women during pregnancy, there is a small risk that it can have adverse side effects on childrens development.

Now a Tufts team, including three undergraduates, have found that the birth defects might result from sertraline directly damaging a cells genetic information, or DNAand that one potential way to counter this effect is with antioxidants such as vitamin C. Their results were published recently in Scientific Reports.

To study the issue, Michael Levin, A92, Vannevar Bush Professor of Biology, and Mitch McVey, a professor of molecular biology who specializes in fruit fly genetics and DNA repair, worked with undergraduates Catherine Donlon, A16, Arpita Jajoo, A19, and Sarah Shnayder, A20.

Donlon spearheaded the project in McVeys lab as part of her senior honors thesis. To see if sertraline affected baby flies like it does children, Donlon raised thousands of fruit flies in the lab, feeding the mothers sertraline-laced sugar water.

When Donlon didnt see a clear effect on the baby flies, she instead tried feeding sertralinewhich is better known under its brand name Zoloftto the developing fruit fly larvae. Although fruit fly larvae do not develop inside their mothers, they somewhat resemble human embryos in that their organs and bodies continue to develop over time.

Based on whats known about some of the developmental effects seen in children of mothers who take sertraline for mental disorders, Donlon hypothesized that sertraline-eating larvae would develop more slowly than other larvae.

But in fact almost half of the larvae that consumed sertraline died before reaching the final stage in their development. McVey was struck by Donlons results. What surprised me the most is that people have looked at the effects of sertraline in human cell culture and in mice in the past, and they havent seen any real toxicity, he said. Sertraline didnt seem to have much effect on the mice, which is one reason that this drug has been on the market for so long, and its been so successful.

At the same time, serotonin has been shown to be a key player in embryonic patterning in other model systems; this is why other SSRIs are known to cause birth defects in vertebrates, Levin said. Cells were using this neurotransmitter molecule to communicate about how to make an embryo long before neurons evolved.

McVey and Levins team then sought to determine how sertraline killed the larvae. Was it that the larvae died because of sertralines effects on serotonin levels, or because of some innate toxicity of the drug?

Jajoo repeated Donlons experiment, but also included some fruit fly larvae that lack the protein responsible for transporting serotonin back into cells. Without this protein, serotonin levels should be higher than normal outside of cells.

If those flies developed slowly, then serotonin might be to blame for the deaths. But if sertraline-eating larvae develop even slower than these flies, then the drug itself might be directly damaging cells DNAwhich is exactly what Jajoo found.

To confirm that the drug directly damages the flies DNA, Jajoo bathed developing wing tissues in sertraline and used a staining technique that visualizes the number of double-stranded breaks in the DNA. Wing tissues bathed in sertraline showed three times the normal number of double-stranded DNA breaks, suggesting that sertraline might cause birth defects by directly damaging the genetic code of developing embryos.

Donlon, now a medical student at New York Medical College, put the use of the drug by expectant mothers in perspective. I think its great to understand the mechanism of how things like sertraline work, but its also really important to understand the reason why medications are prescribed in the first place, she said.

Jajoo, also a medical student now, echoed Donlons view. You have to think about two patients, she said. You have to think about both the developing fetus and the mother, and if the mother needs this SSRI for her wellbeing, then instead of saying, OK, this is damaging, take it away, it would be awesome if it was, OK, this is damaging, we know how, lets fix it.

The team approached their next experiment with this mindset. Levin had a hunch that the damage to the DNA might be caused by reactive oxygen species, an unstable molecule containing oxygen that readily reacts with other molecules and that can be dangerous to cells if not balanced within the body.

There was this great breakthrough moment, said Jajoo, where I was sitting in a meeting with both Mitch [McVey] and Mike [Levin] and Mike said, Well, if its oxidative, can we just throw an antioxidant at it? And we all kind of laughed and then we were like, Wait, can we?

They could and did. The team fed fruit fly larvae both sertraline and vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant, and saw that almost all of the larvae survived. Additionally, they found significantly fewer double-stranded DNA breaks. This supported the idea that the sertraline-induced DNA damage results from reactive oxygen species.

But they didnt definitively show that, McVey said. It would be nice to know how sertraline is interacting with DNAif it isand causing damage. Or is it an indirect effect?

McVey and Levin hope to pursue these questions in the future; according to McVey, theyre just waiting for the right student to work on the project.

Gina Mantica, a graduate student in biology, can be reached at gina.mantica@tufts.edu.

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Countering the Negative Effects of a Common Antidepressant - Tufts Now

When a woman named Shanawdithit died from tuberculosis in Newfoundland nearly 200 years ago, it was widely believed that her death marked a tragic end to her peoples existence.

For centuries, the Beothuk had thrived along the rocky shores of the island, taking on a near-mythical status as descendants of the first people encountered by Norse explorers in what is now Canada. But their population was devastated by decades of starvation and diseases, and when she died in 1829, Shanawdithit was believed to be the last of her line.

New research from Memorial University, however, has found Beothuk DNA probably still exists in people alive today a discovery that would rewrite the history of the Newfoundlands early inhabitants, even as it confirms the accuracy of local First Nations oral tradition.

Weve got good evidence that we have genetic continuity from the Beothic into modern persons, said biologist Dr Steve Carr.

But while the finding would trigger a rethink for historians, the notion is not surprising to local Indigenous groups.

Mikmaq oral history has long asserted a shared ancestry with the original inhabitants of Newfoundland, and local First Nations have worked closely with Carr to help lend genetic evidence to their own traditions.

There were always connections or friendly relations going back more than 200 years ago and when you mingle that way, periodically, things would happen, said Chief Misel Joe of the Miawpukek Mikamawey Mawiomi, a Mikmaq First Nation in Newfoundland.

Historians believe the Beothuk are descended from a group that braved the ocean to cross from Labrador to Newfoundland thousands of years ago and whose distinct culture emerged around 1500 CE. At one point, as many as 2,000 Beothuk lived in communities scattered around Newfoundland.

For generations, they largely resisted and avoided relations with European settlers; the few interactions between the two were defined by violent encounters.

Early European settlements on the coast cut off Beothuk access to critical salmon and seals forcing them to move further inland where they sustained themselves on caribou before finally succumbing to starvation and disease.

But Carrs research suggests it was only a cultural extinction; their genetic legacy lives on.

In his study, Carr used DNA samples from Shanawdithits aunt and uncle Demasduit and Nonosbawsut whose skulls were sent to the University of Edinburgh in the 1850s. After a long campaign by Chief Joes community, the remains were repatriated to Newfoundland from National Museums Scotland in March.

After running samples through a genetics database, Carr was able to find his smoking gun a man in Tennessee who was genetically similar to Nonosbawsut, but had no known Indigenous ancestry.

With only a small amount of data to work with, Carr hopes more samples will further demonstrate a connection.

Its easy to obtain the DNA sequence from somebody and you can count the number of similarities. Thats a very easy thing to do. But to reconstruct the patterns of a relationship is a very challenging problem, said Carr, adding that further research into the known movement and connections between the Beothuk and Mimaq was still required.

The findings also illustrate the way in which genetic uniqueness in this case the distinct sequence of Beothuk mitochondrial genomes can persist intact for generations. While humans share an immense amount of DNA that traces back millennia, said Carr, the intent of his research lay in teasing out the subtle and distinguishing differences between known groups.

For years, academia has ignored the oral histories of Indigenous peoples, said Chief Joe.

Academics are hard people to convince. They often have this mindset that this the way it was no matter what information we give them to the contrary, he said.

He described a frustrating experience in a land claims court, where the adjudicator suggested the Mikmaq first arrived in Newfoundland in the 1700s.

But we have an oral history of British sailors meeting our people and asking for directions. We drew them a map on birch bark. If this is the first time we had ever been on the land, how could we draw a map? said Joe.

Its convenient for government, for everyone, to ignore people who had no written history

The community is excited to keep working with Carr on further testing, said Joe, to further strengthen the evidence of shared ancestry.

This is a big thing for us, he said. But it all comes from something we already knew.

This article was amended on 11 May 2020. An earlier version incorrectly said that the skulls of Demasduit and Nonosbawsut were taken to the Royal Museum in Scotland in 1828.

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Canada: DNA discovery lends weight to First Nations ancestral story - The Guardian

At times its hard to believe that two of the most beloved cult comedies in modern television came from the same mind. Rick and Morty, with its bristling introspection and depressive streaks, often feels far removed from the loving silliness of Community. But theres one moment in every season of Adult Swims animated mega-hit that unites Dan Harmons two creations. Rick and Mortys anthology episodes channel Communitys love of meta mockery and human connection better than any other part of this series.

Even after the premiere of shows such as Westworld, Mr. Robot, and yes, Rick and Morty, no show was quite as meta as Community. As early as Season 2 the NBC comedy was packed with in-jokes, like pulling a Britta or the many, barely noticeable adventures Abed (Danny Pudi) had in the background of many episodes. But what Community always excelled at during even its most ridiculous moments was finding new ways to mock itself.

The savage edge of that mockery appears most clearly in Season 3. In the 2010s it was rare for a network sitcom to be so full of inside jokes and callbacks that it was nearly impossible for casual viewers to watch. But thats exactly what Community became. The full ridiculousness of Documentary Filmmaking: Redux doesnt come across if you didnt see Season 2s intimate and deceptive Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking. Both Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts and Digital Estate Planning fall flat without sitting through literal hours of Shirleys (Yvette Nicole Brown) passive aggression and Pierces (Chevy Chase) bumbling form of offensiveness. Similarly no other show could have ever pulled off something as bizarre, thought-provoking, and imaginative as Remedial Chaos Theory without establishing seasons of character development.

So many episodes in the later seasons of Community happily tore apart what this show was, challenging its sitcom premises, questioning the study groups status as this shows heroes, and painfully digging into its characters to find something more interesting than the average half-hour. Those sorts of explorations have always been an area where Rick and Morty has excelled. But its in each seasons anthology episode that the series really takes a meta step back and examines what it is, not as a piece of pop culture mocking other pieces of pop culture but as a show in and of itself. That more than anything else is pure Community.

Yet in between all of these funny moments and meta musings there was something else in these episodes reminiscent of Community: connection. Community was always true to its name. It was a show about lost people finding a family in each other, and as a result each episode typically ended on a loving, uplifting note. Though its never so loving, Rick and Mortys anthology episodes have often revealed a deeper understanding of Rick Sanchez and the Smith family than other installments. There was Mortys vulnerable plea for Summer to stay in Rixty Minutes; their fear then budding realization about Jerrys uselessness in Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate; Mortys growing understanding of his grandpa in Mortys Mind Blowers; and Ricks drunken rant that terrifies Morty in Never Ricking Morty. So much of the growth in this show is introspective and incomplete. But on the outskirts of these clip episodes this family typically connects in ways weve never seen them before. The result is often murky, dark, and unsettling but that base human connection is still happening.

Years before Rick and Morty were ever laughing at Interdimensional Cable, Community had a clip show of its own. Season 2s Paradigms of Human Memory saw the study group reflecting on a series of past adventures, none of which ever happened on screen. The entire half-hour is constructed to be a biting takedown of lazy anthology episodes that typically appear in TV comedies. But watching it now theres something more between the episodes hinting at future spinoffs like Regional Holiday Music and cutting together shipping videos deliberately mocking fans. The seeds of Rick and Mortys decidedly more acidic brand of comedy can be seen.

Where to stream Rick and Morty

Where to stream Community

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'Rick and Morty's Anthology Episodes Share the Most DNA with 'Community' - Decider

SEATTLE, May 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Traditional solid-phase array and alternative bead array are some of the types of DNA microarray. Major applications of DNA/Gene microarray include, genomics, gene expression, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) analysis, and proteomics.

The global DNA/gene microarray market is estimated to account for US$ 3,018.3 Mn in terms of value in 2020 and is expected to reach US$ 7,693.0 Mn by the end of 2027.

Global DNA/Gene Microarray Market: Drivers

Significant developments in personalized medicines is expected to fuel growth of the global DNA/gene microarray market over the forecast period. For instance, in April 2020, Indivumed GmbH, an oncology company, launched the Oncology Alliance for Individualized Medicine, an international collaborative alliance to advance personalized medicine in cancer through IndivuType, the companys multi-omics database.

Read Report Summary @https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/dna-gene-microarray-market-3825

Global DNA/Gene Microarray Market: Opportunities

Increasing investment in DNA sequencing is expected to offer lucrative growth opportunities for players in the market. For instance, in January 2020, Element Biosciences, a biotechnology startup, raised US$ 80 million to develop DNA sequencing platform.

Global DNA/Gene Microarray Market: Restraints

Presence of alternative technologies is expected to hamper growth of the global DNA/gene microarray market. Protein chip and lab-on-chip, glycomic arrays, tissue arrays, and cell arrays are some of the alternatives to DNA/gene microarray.

Key Takeaways:

The global DNA/gene microarray market was valued at US$ 2,640.7 Mn in 2019 and is forecast to reach a value of US$ 7,693.0 Mn by 2027 at a CAGR of 12.4% between 2020 and 2027. The market is expected to witness significant growth owing to increasing technological advancement in microarray technology, and increasing demand for genetic testing.

Gene expression and SNP analysis segment held dominant position in the global DNA/gene microarray market in 2019, accounting for 25.6% share in terms of value, followed by oncology and drug development, respectively. Increasing drug development, and demand for personalized medicine is expected to support growth of the segment over the forecast period.

North America held dominant position in the global DNA/gene microarray market in 2019, accounting for 34.1% share in terms of value, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific, respectively. North America has presence of leading manufacturers, and wide number of research institutes which make use of these products. These factors are expected to support growth of the market over the forecast period.

Request for Sample PDF copy @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/3825

Market Trends

The market is witnessing launch of new genetic tests. For instance, in July 2019, MyHeritage, an online genealogy platform with web, mobile, and software products and services, launched new Health+Ancestry test, a health-related genetic test.

The market is also witnessing increasing adoption of nanoarrays, owing to their various advantages in terms of sensitivity, specificity, speed, portability, throughput, and cost. Nanoarrays find application in drug discovery and disease diagnosis.

Global DNA/Gene Microarray Market: Competitive Landscape

Major players operating in the global DNA/gene microarray market include, Affymetrix, Inc., Illumina, Inc., Agilent Technologies Inc., Roche NimbleGen Inc., Sequenom, Inc., Biometrix Technology Inc., LC Sciences, Life Technologies Corp., Lifegen Technologies LLC, Microarrays Inc.

Global DNA/Gene Microarray Market: Key Developments

Major players in the market are focused on launching new products to expand their product portfolio. For instance, in February 2020, Twist Bioscience Corporation launched the Twist Targeted Methylation Sequencing Solution to study methylation pattern changes in a wide range of research fields including cancer

Major players in the market are also focused on adopting M&A strategies to expand their product portfolio. For instance, in December 2019, Oncology Pharma, Inc. signed a Letter of Intent to acquire at least a 50% stake in Diagnomics, Inc., a private CLIA certified & CAP accredited private molecular Genomics lab and provider of DNA microarrays, Next Generation Sequencing, and real-time PCR solutions

Buy-Now this Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/buy-now/3825

Segmentation

Related Topics:

CELL & TISSUE CULTURE SUPPLIES MARKET

Cell and tissue culture supplies are used in biotechnology, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine field. Successful plant cell/tissue culture requires high quality and dependable culture media. Various instruments that are used for cell and tissue culturing are plates, flasks, culture bags, pipetting instruments, incubators, cryostorage equipment, biosafety cabinets, and others. Increasing application of cell and tissue culture is expected to boost growth of the global cell and tissue culture supplies market over the forecast period.

Read more @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/cell-and-tissue-culture-supplies-market-3770

Excerpt from:
DNA/Gene Microarray Market to Reach US$ 7,693.0 Million globally by end of 2027, Owing to Significant Developments in Personalized Medicines - CMI -...