Daily Archives: April 27, 2021

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SAVE UP TO $50: As of April 26, get the 23andMe Ancestry + Traits DNA kit for $88.95 and the 23andMe Health + Ancestry kit for only $149.95 a $10.05 and $50 savings, respectively.

Looking for a more unique Mother's Day gift than flowers and jewelry this year? Help mom reconnect with her culture and get personalized genetic reports with a 23andMe DNA kit. As of April 26, you can score the classic Ancestry + Traits DNA kit for $10.05 off, or the upgraded Health + Ancestry kit for $50 off.

The 23andMe ancestry and traits kit will help the mom in your life discover which global regions her DNA comes from. After taking a saliva test and sending it back in for analysis, mom will be able to get insights on her maternal and paternal ancestors, and see how they moved around the world in previous generations. Even if you think you're a mixture of a bunch of different ethnicities, you can trace down your ancestry to 0.1%.

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Help your mom discover herself, her culture, and more this Mother's Day, and snag a 23andMe DNA kit while these deals last.

Original post:
23andMe DNA kits on sale: Save up to $50 - Mashable

A skull of the extinct horned crocodile from Madagascar (Voay robustus), which is part of the American Museum of Natural Historys paleontology collection. Credit: M. Ellison/AMNH

New ancient DNA-based study on Madagascar crocodile suggests that modern crocodiles likely originated in Africa.

A study led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History has resolved a long-standing controversy about an extinct horned crocodile that likely lived among humans in Madagascar. Based on ancient DNA, the research shows that the horned crocodile was closely related to true crocodiles, including the famous Nile crocodile, but on a separate branch of the crocodile family tree. The study, published today (April 27, 2021) in the journal Communications Biology, contradicts the most recent scientific thinking about the horned crocodiles evolutionary relationships and also suggests that the ancestor of modern crocodiles likely originated in Africa.

This crocodile was hiding out on the island of Madagascar during the time when people were building the pyramids and was probably still there when pirates were getting stranded on the island, said lead author Evon Hekkala, an assistant professor at Fordham University and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. They blinked out just before we had the modern genomic tools available to make sense of the relationships of living things. And yet, they were the key to understanding the story of all the crocodiles alive today.

The arrival of modern humans in Madagascar between about 9,000 and 2,500 years ago preceded the extinction of many of the islands large animals, including giant tortoises, elephant birds, dwarf hippos, and several lemur species. One lesser-known extinction that occurred during this period was that of an endemic horned crocodile, Voay robustus. Early explorers to Madagascar noted that Malagasy peoples consistently referred to two types of crocodiles on the island: a large robust crocodile and a more gracile form with a preference for rivers. This suggests that both types persisted until very recently, but only the gracile form, now recognized as an isolated population of the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus), is currently is found on the island.

Despite nearly 150 years of investigation, the position of the horned crocodile in the tree of life has remained controversial. In the 1870s, it was first described as a new species within the true crocodile group, which includes the Nile, Asian, and American crocodiles. Then, in the early part of the 20th century, it was thought that the specimens simply represented very old Nile crocodiles. And finally, in 2007, a study based on physical characteristics of the fossil specimens concluded that the horned crocodile was actually not a true crocodile, but in the group that includes dwarf crocodiles.

Teasing apart the relationships of modern crocodiles is really difficult because of the physical similarities, Hekkala said. Many people dont even realize that there are multiple species of crocodiles, and they see them as this animal thats unchanging through time. But weve been trying to get to the bottom of the great diversity that exists among them.

To fully examine the horned crocodiles place in the evolutionary tree, Hekkala and her collaborators at the Museum made a number of attempts to sequence DNA from fossil specimens, including two well-preserved skulls that have been at the Museum since the 1930s.

This a project weve tried to do on and off for many years, but the technology just hadnt advanced enough, so it always failed, said study co-author George Amato, emeritus director of the Museums Institute for Comparative Genomics. But in time, we had both the computational setup and the paleogenomics protocols that could actually fish out this DNA from the fossil and finally find a home for this species.

The results place the horned crocodile right next to the true crocodile branch of the evolutionary tree, making it the closest species to the common ancestor of the crocodiles alive today.

This finding was surprising and also very informative to how we think about the origin of the true crocodiles found around the tropics today, Amato said. The placement of this individual suggests that true crocodiles originated in Africa and from there, some went to Asia and some went to the Caribbean and the New World. We really needed the DNA to get the correct answer to this question.

Reference: 27 April 2021, Communications Biology.DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02017-0

Other authors on the study include John Gatesy, Apurva Narechania, Shaena Montanari, and Mark Norell from the American Museum of Natural History; Robert Meredith and Matthew Aardema from the Museum and Montclair State University; Michael Russello from the University of British Columbia; Evelyn Jenson from the University of British Columbia and Newcastle University; and Christopher Brochu from the University of Iowa.

Funding was provided in part by the University of California, Riverside, Fordham University Faculty Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation grant no.s RAPID DEB-1931213, DEB-1556701, and DBI-1725932.

See the original post here:
Ancient DNA Reveals New Spot in the Tree of Life for Extinct Horned Crocodile - SciTechDaily

Zhang: This is what I find so fascinating. If the bacteria are largely the same, why dont we have Black Death anymore or big outbreaks of bubonic plague?

Krause: First of all, we changed our lifestyle quite a bit. We are just living in much more hygienic conditions. Plague is actually not usually transmitted between people, but between animals and people, and usually the vector is a flea. We dont live with mice and rats in the house as much.

Also, the type of rodents changed. In the medieval time, when the Black Death happened, we had a very large population of black ratsmuch, much bigger than today. And in fact, they were largely replaced by brown rats, Rattus norvegicus. Now, brown rats are very different in their behavior. They live in the sewage, and they live in the ground. They dont live under the roof. The black rat was called the roof rat. They were living where people stored their grain, and when people still had the grain storage in the house, thats where the rats were.

But people that do have exposure to animals, like people that live in the countryside, people that go hunting, they are usually the people that contract plague these days. Theres several cases in the U.S. every year. And there are warning signs if you go to the Grand Canyon: Dont feed the squirrels, because you could get plague. Its actually moving in the U.S. from the West Coast to the East Coast with rodent populations.

Zhang: I live in New York, so I guess we have that to look forward to at some point.

Krause: And you have a lot of rats in New York.

Zhang: Yes, but theyre brown rats!

Krause: Fortunately, yes.

Zhang: The spread of brown rats through global shipping routes is one of the big ecological stories of the past several centuries. Environmentally, its been devastating, especially for a lot of island ecosystems, so its really interesting to think about the role they might have played in spreading diseaseor not spreading it.

Krause: Some people speculate that the brown rat saved us from the plague. One of the mysteries is that the plague disappeared in the beginning of the 18th century, when you still have rats, when you still have hygienic conditions which are not great. What happens in Europe is that the new rat gets introduced. The brown rat arrivestheres some historical documentation around the 1720sand then it starts spreading. Actually, wherever the brown rat moves, the black rat is getting replaced, because they are really aggressive toward black rats. The black rats disappear. Its ironic, almost, that people, when they see rats today, they think about the plague and How horrible. But maybe that rat that you see today, like in New York in the subway, is actually the one that saved us from the plague.

Zhang: I think this really speaks to how disease is contingent on human behavior. We might think of diseases as things that just exist in naturetheyre out there and theyre trying to kill us. But whats happening is that these pathogens are only successful if they find and exploit the seams in human behavior. We created the conditions for the plague because we started living in cities, because we started living with rats, because we have fleas.

Original post:
Human Teeth Hold the Secrets of Ancient Plagues - The Atlantic

Imagine a small house whose exterior is covered with planters full of ripe radishes, carrots, and lettuce. Indoors, another wall of plants stretches floor to ceiling. Their microbe-rich roots capture harmful air pollutants. If you touch the plants, beneficial microbes cross to you, possibly prompting a subtle shift of your own microbiome toward better health.

The house captures rainwater, purifying it on-site with solar energy. The entire structure is made of flaked-wood slabs that are strong enough to replace steel. Unlike steel, though, these slabs sequester carbon. The building can be taken apart, the slabs re-used elsewhere, or their carbon released to other organisms that keep it from re-entering the atmosphere.

Houses like these may become commonplace even urgently necessary as the worlds resources grow scarcer, the planet warms, and the climate weirds. So the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA), a transdisciplinary research enterprise based in the School of Architecture, is rethinking global sustainability for the 21st century.

By combining novel science and technology with vernacular building principles, center researchers aim to enable a truly sustainable built environment, one that that not only provides shelter but also fosters healthy ecosystems and even bends the CO2 curve.

Our [current] infrastructural model is bankrupt. It's doesn't work. It's neither resilient nor life-supporting, says Anna Dyson, the Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design, who also holds appointments in the schools of Architecture, Environment, and Nursing. What we seek to do is partner with [emerging economies] to forge a 21st-century way of resiliently coexisting with nonhuman living ecosystems and supplying our requirements for energy, water, and materials sustainably.

Founded three years ago by Dyson, Yale CEA brings together faculty, research scientists, and Ph.D. students from multiple schools, alongside industrial collaborators; collectively, their affiliations include the Yale schools of Architecture, the Environment, Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, Management, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Law.

Instead of a traditional approach that sends raw building materials on a linear journey through consumption and waste, Yale CEA faculty instead train students to work with natural systems, so that resources, energy, and life flow into, within, around, and away from a building. Everything is multifunctional; nothing is wasted. A system that captures sunlight to reduce indoor lighting needs, for instance, may also use the warmth to heat and purify water. A wall supports a microfarm, whose ecoystems are designed to interact with human beings and promote health. Building materials keep carbon out of the atmosphere while providing structural support. Such buildings are largely self-sufficient, yet they constantly interact with their occupants and their surroundings in ways that aim to leave both better off.

We go all the way into the lab and work alongside physicists, material scientists, and engineers to look at how we can manipulate energy and material flows in different ways, and how we can satisfy multiple technical, functional, aesthetic, and cultural criteria simultaneously, Dyson says. If we can do that, we can deliver systems that have a lot of value to society, and we can start to move towards on-site net zero energy, water, et cetera in a real way.

I tell students all the time, You are so lucky to be entering the field right now, because architecture has blown wide open, says Alan Organschi, an architect, senior critic at the School of Architecture, and principal of the New Haven firm Gray Organschi Architecture. Its no longer sitting at a desk and drawing skyscrapers or houses. It's thinking systemically about what we consume and where it's going to go at the end of its life.

Suddenly [students are] able to see buildings, not as permanent objects in the landscape, but as technological objects that litter the landscape [and] that must be accounted for. That's an educational paradigm shift.

This shift comes not a moment too soon. Globally, buildings account for 40% of global energy use and 25% of water consumption, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The built environment already accounts for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, the UNEP estimates, even as urbanization accelerates all over the world.

But we could be designing to remedy the situation.

Water purification, for example, is a crucial function a building could play. Dyson and Jaehong Kim, the Henry P. Becton Sr. Professor and chair of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, are developing a solar water disinfection window unit that could provide clean drinking water and safe disinfectant products like hydrogen peroxide to people who otherwise lack safe access to both. In addition, this unit can provide power and hot water, as well as reduce indoor glare and heat gain inside the household.

Mandi Pretorius, a Ph.D. student who is working with Dyson and Kim on solar disinfection, points out that the new ways of thinking are in some ways premodern: less [about] centrality and authority and control and more about distributed decentralized processes, such as water treatment that doesnt depend on municipal facilities.

Then, too, theres what we build with. New building materials may not only be lighter and more renewable than steel and concrete but also could remove carbon from the atmosphere and safely store it, Organschi says.

For years, he explains, the standard sustainability story has held that most buildings life-cycle energy consumption occurs during the years when they are in active use. That has led to an emphasis on creating efficient, well-insulated structures.

But up-front resources and construction the steps that take place before anyone ever steps into the building account for a substantial share of emissions, Organschi has found. So its crucial to take that embodied carbon stage into account.

Steel and concrete, for instance, are resource-intensive. But a promising alternative is engineered wood products. With wood harvested from sustainably managed forests where soil health and high biodiversity are maintained, we could store vast amounts of carbon in our buildings. Humanitys very homes could serve as a collective global carbon sink. Another type of construction materials that can safely tie up carbon in buildings is made of waste from agricultural products. These relationships undergird what is called a circular material economy.

As a bonus, interiors made with wood products rather than mineral derivatives like drywall can buffer moisture and heat levels and may even support human health effects that Organschi is studying with collaborators from Yale School of Public Health and others.

The health effects of the indoor environment are a central CEA concern.

We're reinventing the DNA of the built environment, Dyson says and, with grants to study the genetic material of indoor microorganisms, she means it literally.

Humanity has spent most of its history outdoors, she points out, a situation that changed comparatively recently.

With indoor environments, we're cutting ourselves off from a biodiverse ecosystem within which we co-evolved, Dyson says.

Thats something architecture Ph.D. candidate Phoebe Mankiewicz 24 is working to understand.

Trained as a biologist, Mankiewicz calls herself Yale CEAs green sheep. She is investigating how bacteria in the roots of indoor plants might affect indoor air quality. The right mix of plants and microbes could reduce air pollutants, regulate humidity and temperature, and influence human health by colonizing our bodies, releasing beneficial compounds into the air, or calming our nervous systems.

Such complex territory remains barely explored by biologists, let alone architects, according to Mankiewicz. With experience in traditional science labs, she is designing experiments with different light levels and plant growth media, such as nutrient-rich liquids or potting mixes, at Yale School of the Environment. Working with the School of Public Health faculty member Krystal Pollitt, Mankiewicz will measure how these plant systems interact with indoor pollutants, like formaldehyde emitted by carpeting.

In no other program would I be allowed to look at biology and plant ecology, physiology and soil science, and air quality chemistry all together, said Mankiewicz. I wouldn't get to measure all of these variables, which are so inherently interconnected.

Understanding how peoples bodies react to a space can help architects build for better health. Yale CEAs Socioecological Visual Analytics (SEVA) tool collects data from sensors monitoring the indoor environment, such as carbon dioxide levels, and physiologic measures like heart rate, explains a center co-founder Mohamed Aly Etman, a research scientist at the School of Architecture. He uses SEVA with Yale School of Medicine researchers to better understand how to design healthful interiors.

In 2018, the School of Architecture, Yale CEA, and Gray Organschi Architecture showcased their ideas with a prototype tiny house in New York City on United Nations (UN) Plaza, one that powers itself as well as nourishing its residents. Built by JIG DesignBuild, Organschis construction company, of sustainable materials, the 22-square-meter Ecological Living Module (ELM) generated solar energy and captured daylight to replace electric light through a novel system that uses less than 1% of the toxic, non-renewable semi-conductor materials found in conventional solar panels. The little building, designed byGray Organschi Architecture, also harvested and purified rainwater and remediated its own indoor air, while graywater irrigated a micro-farm attached to the outer walls.

Such near self-sufficiency is crucial, for example, for refugees living in cities that prohibit them from accessing local infrastructure. But its also key in places that lack pre-existing infrastructure altogether. Yale CEA aims next to partner with UNEP to build an ELM in a town in Guatemala, one of many impoverished communities that are being devastated by emigration. There, the solar-water disinfection and farm walls could demonstrate novel methods to provide residents with safe drinking water and a nutrient-rich diet.

The approach to the building is replicable, if not necessarily its materials or final form, Etman said. Those details will vary depending on where in the world its built. In his home country, Egypt, for example, such a house could harvest more solar energy an abundant resource there and it would also have to accommodate a larger family, in keeping with cultural norms in that region.

Projects like this allow for the kind of urban and ecosystemic testing and experimentation that large commercial buildings in developed cities dont, Dyson said. Yale CEA continues to collaborate with the United Nations.

The built environment process is conservative and risk-averse. The components often depend on each other, so it's hard to make the kind of wholesale change we need for a sustainable future, she says. But small-scale demonstrations permit us to show entirely new systemic models and could lead to radical change by showing what future cities could be.

Continue reading here:
Global ambition: 'Reinventing the DNA of the built environment' - Yale News