Category Archives: DNA

TEHRAN, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Iran's top forensic official said on Sunday that the country is ready to export its domestically-developed DNA testing kits to other countries, including the United States.

President of Iran Legal Medical Organization Abbas Masjedi made the remarks when unveiling a number of new medical devices at a conference in the capital Tehran, according to Mizan news agency affiliated with Iran's judiciary.

"Our message to the United States is that if its people need the DNA testing kits of Iran Legal Medical Organization, they can submit their requests to related Iranian authorities, and we will definitely supply the product to them in proportion to their needs, as we, under no circumstances, let political issues and sanctions overshadow peoples' health," he said.

Iran is only five products away from achieving full self-sufficiency in manufacturing genetic laboratories' devices, and they will be unveiled within a year, Masjedi noted.

He stressed that because of the imposition of the U.S. "cruel" sanctions on Iran, his organization was faced with significant periodic shortages in materials and devices over the past years.

Speaking at the same conference, Iranian Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said Iran is currently among the world's advanced states in terms of employing modern technologies in the field of forensic medicine despite the so-called "paralysing" sanctions against the country.

Iran has been under U.S. unilateral sanctions for the past four decades.

The sanctions intensified following the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Although the United States claimed that humanitarian items, including medicine and foodstuffs, are not included in the sanctions list, its embargoes on Iran's oil exports and banking sector have, in practice, prevented the country from importing such goods.

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Iran says ready to export DNA testing kits to U.S. - Xinhua

Neanderthal genes may be one cause of the disorder nicknamed the "Viking disease," in which fingers become frozen in a bent position, a new study finds.

The study, published June 14 in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, finds gene variants that were inherited from Neanderthals that dramatically increase the odds of developing the condition, officially called Dupuytren's disease.,

Dupuytren's disease is a crippling hand disorder named after a French surgeon, in which the fingers, typically the ring and little fingers, become permanently locked in a bent position. The condition is very common in Northern European countries where the Vikings settled, hence its nickname. It typically afflicts about 30% of men over 60 years in Northern Europe and seems to run in families. Treatment is mainly surgical, but recurrence is common. Although smoking, alcoholism, diabetes and anti-seizure medication can increase the odds of developing the disease, the exact cause has remained elusive.

The rarity of Dupuytren's disease among Africans led Dr. Hugo Zeberg, an evolutionary geneticist at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, to wonder whether the genes tied to the disease came from Neanderthals, given that Africans have very limited Neanderthal ancestry.

Related story: Neanderthals passed down their tall noses to modern humans, genetic analysis finds

The researchers combined data from three large biobanks in the U.S., the U.K. and Finland comprising 7,871 cases and 645,880 controls in people of primarily European descent. They found 61 genetic variants tied to a higher risk of Dupuytren's disease.

Next, they compared these gene variants with the previously sequenced Neanderthal genome. To their surprise, they discovered that, of these 61 variants, three variants were of Neanderthal origin, of which two were very strongly linked to the disease. The Neanderthal gene most strongly linked to the disease, called EPDR1, sits on chromosome 7.

This isn't the first time that Neanderthal genes left behind in modern humans have been linked to disease. A 2014 study in the journal Nature tied several present-day human diseases such as diabetes, Crohn's disease, lupus and cirrhosis to Neanderthal DNA remnants.

But the link between Dupuytren's disease and these Neanderthal gene variants is especially strong. Two of the genetic mutations were the second- and third-most strongly associated with the odds of having the disease, respectively. "This is a very strong association," Zeberg told Live Science.

Severe COVID-19 is the only other disease that has been found to have such a strong geneticconnection with Neanderthals, Zeberg added.

"It's aninteresting study that sheds new light on the genetic basis ofDupuytren's disease," Serena Tucci, an anthropologist and evolutionary geneticist at Yale University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email, adding that it's the first to tie the disease to remnant DNA from our close human relatives.

People with roots outside Africa have about 2% Neanderthal DNA in their genome. So statistically, by random chance, you would expect Neanderthal DNA to collectively account for around 2% of the genetic risk of the disease. "But here we find that 8.4% is explained by Neanderthal gene flow," much more than is expected by chance alone, Zeberg noted.

Previous work on Dupuytren's implicated the EPDR1 gene; this gene encodes ependymin-related 1 protein, which plays a role in muscle contractility.

The new research strengthens the case that mutated versions of the EPDR1 protein lead to Dupuytren's. The study has implications for future targeted therapy, Zeberg said.

As next steps, Zeberg hopes to do more clinically oriented research on the disease. Searching for other diseases tied to remnant DNA from Denisovans, the East Eurasian cousins of Neanderthals, is also on the agenda.

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Mysterious 'Viking disease' linked to Neanderthal DNA - Livescience.com

The Molecular Revolution: How DNA Data Storage is Changing the Data Landscape

The molecular revolution is upon us, and it is transforming the way we store and manage data. As the world continues to generate an ever-increasing amount of digital information, traditional storage solutions such as hard drives and magnetic tapes are struggling to keep up. Enter DNA data storage, a cutting-edge technology that harnesses the power of natures most efficient and compact storage medium: the DNA molecule. This revolutionary approach to data storage has the potential to reshape the data landscape, offering unparalleled density, durability, and longevity.

At its core, DNA data storage involves encoding digital information into synthetic DNA molecules, which can then be read back using DNA sequencing techniques. This process essentially converts the binary code of digital data (comprised of ones and zeros) into the four-letter genetic code of DNA (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine). The resulting DNA molecules can be stored in a variety of ways, including in liquid form or embedded within synthetic materials.

One of the most compelling advantages of DNA data storage is its incredible density. DNA molecules are capable of storing vast amounts of information in an incredibly small space. In fact, it is estimated that a single gram of DNA can store up to 215 petabytes (215 million gigabytes) of data. To put this into perspective, if all the data in the world were stored in DNA, it would fit into the back of a single pickup truck. This remarkable density has the potential to revolutionize industries such as data centers, which currently consume vast amounts of energy and physical space to store and manage digital information.

In addition to its impressive storage capacity, DNA data storage also offers exceptional durability and longevity. Unlike traditional storage media, which can degrade over time and become unreadable, DNA is an incredibly stable molecule that can last for thousands of years if properly preserved. This makes it an ideal medium for long-term data storage, particularly for important cultural and historical records that must be preserved for future generations.

The potential applications of DNA data storage are vast and varied. In addition to its obvious use in data centers and archival storage, the technology could also be employed in fields such as cybersecurity, where the unique properties of DNA could be harnessed to create ultra-secure encryption methods. Furthermore, the ability to store massive amounts of data in a tiny space could have significant implications for the development of next-generation computing devices, potentially enabling the creation of ultra-compact, high-capacity storage systems.

Despite its many advantages, there are still several challenges that must be overcome before DNA data storage can become a mainstream technology. One of the primary hurdles is the cost of synthesizing and sequencing DNA, which is currently prohibitively expensive for large-scale data storage applications. However, advances in DNA synthesis and sequencing technologies are driving down costs at a rapid pace, making it increasingly likely that DNA data storage will become a viable option in the not-too-distant future.

Another challenge is the speed at which data can be written to and read from DNA molecules. Currently, the process of encoding and decoding DNA is relatively slow compared to traditional storage methods. However, researchers are actively working on developing new techniques to accelerate this process, potentially paving the way for DNA data storage to become a practical and efficient alternative to conventional storage technologies.

In conclusion, the molecular revolution is poised to transform the data landscape, offering a powerful new approach to storing and managing the worlds ever-growing trove of digital information. As DNA data storage technology continues to advance, it has the potential to reshape industries, drive innovation, and preserve our collective knowledge for generations to come.

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The Molecular Revolution: How DNA Data Storage is Changing the ... - CityLife

A lizard called Delcourts giant gecko has long been one of herpetologys biggest mysteries literally.

Presumed extinct, the animal is by far the largest gecko known to have crawled the Earth, measuring at least 600 millimeters, or about two feet, from snout to tail tip. The only example scientists have of the gecko, however, is a single museum specimen, preserved in the 19th century with no notes as to its origin or identity.

Now, DNA from the specimen reveals that the colossal lizard belongs to a group of New Caledonian diplodactylid geckos, researchers report June 19 in Scientific Reports. Geckos in this lineage repeatedly evolved extreme body sizes on the archipelago east of Australia.

Compared to all other geckos, its monstrous, says Matthew Heinicke, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. It happens to be in a lineage where evolution of gigantism wasnt a one-off event.

Previously dubbed Hoplodactylus delcourti, the gecko was renamed Gigarcanum delcourti in the new study, placing the animal in its own genus whose name means giant mystery. It is about 50 percent as long and several times as heavy as the largest living gecko species (Rhacodactylus leachianus), also a member of the New Caledonian group.

Likely a nocturnal hunter, G. delcourti was big enough to prey on birds and lizards, including other geckos. Its toe pads and long claws suggest it lived in trees, though it was probably the maximum size at which a geckocould still adhere to vertical surfaces with its hallmark sticky grip, Heinicke says.

The gecko came to scientists attention in the 1980s after collections manager Alain Delcourt found the long-forgotten specimen at the Natural History Museum of Marseille in France. Stuffed rather than stored in spirits, the gecko sports a thick trunk, bulbous head and brown skin with faint red bands. Herpetologist Aaron Bauer of Villanova University in Pennsylvania was a graduate student when he arrived at the museum in 1983 to investigate the newly rediscovered specimen.

When Delcourt removed the enormous gecko from a cabinet, my jaw dropped, Bauer says.

Bauer cowrote the first description of the species in 1986, placing the reptile with a New Zealand gecko group based on itsphysical characteristics. He also suggested that because of its coloring and size, the gecko could be the kawekaweau a huge arboreal lizard from the folklore of the Indigenous Mori people.

Since then, techniques for retrieving and analyzing archival DNA have accelerated, allowing scientists to glean new information from degraded museum specimens, including of extinct species such as the dodo and thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger (SN: 5/19/08).

Heinicke, Bauer and colleagues revisited the mysterious giant gecko, extracting and analyzing DNA from one of its femurs. That genetic material rewrote G. delcourtis origin story, showing that it is not even closely related to New Zealands geckos. The diplodactylid geckos of New Caledonia and New Zealand are separated by about 45 million years of evolution.

The teams finding turns things on their head, as gecko geeks worldwide have long associated G. delcourti with New Zealand, says Paul Doughty, a herpetologist at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. But this is the thing about these precious museum specimens. With new technology, they can give up new secrets.

Not everyone is surprised by the finding. Trevor Worthy, a paleontologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, previously suggested that G. delcourti may have come from New Caledonia, given its absence in New Zealands extensive fossil record. You would think that such a big animal would have turned up, and there was no sign of it, Worthy says. Its exciting to see this mystery cleared up.

Could G. delcourti still be nestled in the treetops of New Caledonia?

Its unlikely, but possible, the researchers say. New geckos continue to be discovered on the islands. Id like to hold out at least a tiny glimmer of hope that there could be something out there, Bauer says.

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DNA has revealed the origin of this giant 'mystery' gecko - Science News Magazine

Washington:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday pushed back on criticism of his governments handling of religious minorities and dissent, saying democracy is in our DNA, democracy is our spirit, democracy runs in our veins and there is no space in India for any kind of discrimination.

Modi was responding to a question from a reporter at the White House along side President Joe Biden. They both took questions from one American and one Indian reporter.

For both India and the US, the Prime Minister said, Democracy is in our DNA, democracy is our spirit, democracy runs in our veins.

Modi was picking up from President Bidens remarks earlier at the briefing about democracy being in the DNA of both the US and India.

He added: We live in a democracy. And our ancestors have actually put words to this concept, and that is in the form of our Constitution. The entire country runs on that. We have always proved that democracy can deliver, and when I say deliver, this is regardless of caste, greed, religion, gender. There is absolutely no space for discrimination.

Modi added, When we live in democracy, there is absolutely no space for discrimination. And that is why India believes in moving ahead with everybody, with trust, and with everybodys efforts. These are our foundations, principles, which are the basis of how we operate, how we live our lives in India.

President Biden also found himself on the defensive when asked about criticism of his administration for overlooking targeting of religious minorities and crackdown on dissent in India.

Biden said he and the Prime Minister had a good discussion about democratic values, thats the nature of our relationship. Were straightforward with each other and we respect each other.

Biden went on to say said the US-China relationship is not in the same space as the US-India relationship because there is an overwhelming respect for each other as we are both democracies. It is in Americas DNA and I believe in Indias DNA.

The two leaders had very productive talks, first in a smaller bilateral meeting and then in an extended one.

They were joined by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra, Indian Ambassador to US Taranjit Singh Sandhu, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, among others.

The two sides will detail the outcomes of the meetings in a joint statement, which is expected shortly. IANS

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'Democracy in our DNA, no space for discrimination', Modi says in ... - The Meghalayan

Large language models (LLMs) learn from statistical associations between letters and words to predict what comes next in a sentence and are trained on large amounts of data. For instance, GPT-4, which is the LLM underlying the popular generative AI app ChatGPT, is trained on several petabytes (several million gigabytes) of text.

Biologists are leveraging the capability of these LLMs to shed new light on genetics by identifying statistical patterns in DNA sequences. DNA language models (also called genomic or nucleotide language models) are similarly trained on large numbers of DNA sequences.

DNA as the language of life is an oft-repeated clich. A genome is the entire set of DNA sequences that make up the genetic recipe for any organism. Unlike written languages, DNA has few letters: A, C, G, and T (representing the compounds adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine). As simple as this genomic language might seem, we are far from uncovering its syntax. DNA language models can improve our understanding of genomic grammar one rule at a time.

What makes ChatGPT incredibly powerful is its adaptability to a wide range of tasks, from generating poems to copy editing an essay. DNA language models are versatile too. Their applications range from predicting what different parts of the genome do to predicting how different genes interact with each other. By learning genome features from DNA sequences, without the need for reference genomes, language models could also potentially open up new methods of analysis.

A model trained on the human genome, for example, was able to predict sites on RNA where proteins are likely to bind. This binding is important in the process of gene expression the conversion of DNA into proteins. Specific proteins bind to RNA, limiting how much of it is then further translated into proteins. In this way, these proteins are said to mediate gene expression. To be able to predict these interactions, the model needed to intuit not just where in the genome these interactions will take place but also how the RNA will fold, as its shape is critical to such interactions.

The generative capabilities of DNA language models also allow researchers to predict how new mutations may arise in genome sequences. For example, scientists developed a genome-scale language model to predict and reconstruct the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

In recent years, biologists have realized that parts of the genome previously termed junk DNA interact with other parts of the genome in surprising ways. DNA language models offer a shortcut to learn more about these hidden interactions. With their ability to identify patterns across long stretches of DNA sequences, language models can also identify interactions between genes located on distant parts of the genome.

In a new preprint hosted on bioRxiv, scientists from the University of California-Berkeley present a DNA language model with the ability to learn genome-wide variant effects. These variants are single-letter changes to the genome that lead to diseases or other physiological outcomes and generally require expensive experiments (known as genome-wide association studies) to discover.

Named the Genomic Pre-trained Network (GPN), it was trained on the genomes of seven species of plants from the mustard family. Not only can GPN correctly label the different parts of these mustard genomes, it can also be adapted to identify genome variants for any species.

In another study published in Nature Machine Intelligence, scientists developed a DNA language model that could identify gene-gene interactions from single-cell data. Being able to study how genes interact with each other at single-cell resolution will reveal new insights into diseases that involve complex mechanisms. This is because it allows biologists to pin variations between individual cells to genetic factors that lead to disease development.

Language models can have problems with hallucination whereby an output sounds sensible but is not rooted in truth. ChatGPT, for example, could hallucinate health advice that is essentially misinformation. However, for protein design, this creativity makes language models a useful tool for designing completely new proteins from scratch.

Scientists are also applying language models to protein datasets in an effort to build on the success of deep learning models like AlphaFold in predicting how proteins fold. Folding is a complex process that enables a protein which starts off as a chain of amino acids to adopt a functional shape. Because protein sequences are derived from DNA sequences, the latter determine how the former fold, raising the possibility that we may be able to discover everything about protein structure and function from gene sequences alone.

Meanwhile, biologists will continue to use DNA language models to extract more and better insights from the large amounts of genome data available to us, across the full range and diversity of life on Earth.

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How generative AI language models are unlocking the secrets of DNA - Big Think

NEW YORK DNA is all around us even in the air we breathe. Now scientists found that air quality monitoring stations which pull in air to test for pollution also pick up lots of DNA that can reveal what plants and animals have been in the area.

The method could help solve the tricky challenge of keeping tabs on biodiversity, according to a recent study in the journal Current Biology.

The findings suggest biodiversity data has been collected "on massive scales literally for decades and nobody's noticed," said study author Elizabeth Clare, a biologist at Canada's York University.

As animals and plants go through their life cycles, they leave little bits of themselves in the environment scales, fur, feathers, pollen that carry their genetic signature.

Scientists have long known this kind of environmental DNA floats around in water and used it to track what species are swimming in lakes and rivers. It's been harder to get a genetic picture of what's roaming around on land, said Kristine Bohmann, who studies environmental DNA at the University of Copenhagen and was not involved with the latest study.

Air sampling filters stationed in June 2023 at the Auchencorth Moss research facility in Scotland.

In 2021, both Bohmann and Clare worked on similar projects to see whether they could pull animal DNA from the air. After setting up vacuum pumps in local zoos, the teams were able to sequence DNA from dozens of species.

"You can actually, in a Ghostbuster kind of way, vacuum DNA out of the air," Bohmann said.

Then researchers wanted to try that on a bigger scale.

For this latest study, Clare and her team tested air filters from two monitoring stations, one in London and one in Scotland, that are part of a national network to test for pollution.

After extracting DNA from pieces of the filter disks, the scientists were able to identify more than 180 different kinds of plants and animals, said study author Joanne Littlefair, a biologist at Queen Mary University of London.

The filters picked up on a wide range of wildlife, including grasses, fungi, deer, hedgehogs and songbirds along with "the ubiquitous pigeon," Littlefair said.

Now, the team hopes this method could track ecosystems all over the world. Even though biodiversity decline is a global issue, it's hard to test for on a large scale, Clare said.

It's easy to use systems that are already in place, pointed out James Allerton, an air quality scientist at the UK's National Physical Laboratory. Many countries have networks set up to monitor air quality, and some of them store their old filters for years or even decades an archive that could help show how ecosystems have changed over time.

More research is needed to see if the data from these filters can show real biodiversity trends over time, said Fabian Roger, who has been working on a similar project at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Still, it's exciting that an existing system could be "co-opted" to monitor wildlife, he wrote in an email.

Alyssa Bennett, small mammals biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, inspects a dead bat in a cave in Dorset, Vt.

Laura Kloepper, right, a visiting assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire, carries out research with students in a bat cave May 2 in Dorset, Vt.

Researchers shine light on clusters of bats roosting in a cave in Dorset, Vt., on May 2. Scientists studying bat species hit hard by the fungus that causes white nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America, say more bats that hibernate at the Vermont cave are tolerating the disease and passing protective traits on to their young.

Alyssa Bennett, small mammals biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, points to a bat in a cave in Dorset, Vt., on May 2. Scientists studying bat species hit hard by the fungus that causes white nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America, say there is a glimmer of good news for the disease. Experts say more bats that hibernate at a cave in Vermont, the largest bat cave in New England, are tolerating the disease and passing protective traits on to their young.

Bats roost in a cave in Dorset, Vt., on May 2. Scientists studying bat species hit hard by the fungus that causes white nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America, say there is a glimmer of good news for the disease. Experts say more bats that hibernate at a cave in Vermont, the largest bat cave in New England, are tolerating the disease and passing protective traits on to their young.

Laura Kloepper, a visiting assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Center for Acoustics Research and Behavior Lab, carries out research in a bat cave in Dorset, Vt., on May 2. Scientists studying bat species hit hard by the fungus that causes white nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America, say there is a glimmer of good news for the disease.

Bats roost in a cave May 2 in Dorset, Vt., where some of the mammals are tolerating a deadly disease and passing protective traits on to their young.

Alyssa Bennett, small mammals biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, reaches toward roosting bats in a cave in Dorset, Vt., on May 2. Scientists studying bat species hit hard by the fungus that causes white nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America, say there is a glimmer of good news for the disease. Experts say more bats that hibernate at a cave in Vermont, the largest bat cave in New England, are tolerating the disease and passing protective traits on to their young.

Alyssa Bennett, small mammals biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, stretches the wings of a dead bat in a cave in Dorset, Vt.

Alyssa Bennett, small mammals biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, holds a dead bat in a cave in Dorset, Vt., on May 2, 2023. Scientists studying bat species hit hard by the fungus that causes white nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America, say there is a glimmer of good news for the disease. Experts say more bats that hibernate at a cave in Vermont, the largest bat cave in New England, are tolerating the disease and passing protective traits on to their young.

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DNA sucked into air filters can reveal what plants and animals are ... - Lincoln Journal Star

Contact: Kim Kaplan Email: Kim Kaplan

PULLMAN, WA, June 5, 2023Agricultural Research Service and Washington State University scientists have developed an innovative web app called BRIDGEcereal that can quickly and accurately analyze the vast amount of genomic data now available for cereal crops and organize the material into intuitive charts that identify patterns locating genes of interest.

With the rapid advancements in the field of genomics the past 25 years, a game-changer for crop improvement has emerged referred to as the pan-genome, defined as the assembled genome sequences from multiple varieties within a species. But understanding and enhancing crops based on the huge amount of data that have been generated also has created a challenge for researchers due to the lack of efficient and user-friendly bioinformatic tools, particularly ones designed to handle large volume DNA variations in a species.

Take wheat, for example. The standard reference wheat genomewhich was done for the wheat variety Chinese Springis five times larger than the human genome. In addition, researchers have long struggled with the wide variation in the locations of genes that control essential agronomic traits across wheat's 21 chromosomes. Right now, a dozen wheat genomes are publicly available.

This adds up to a huge amount of data, making analysis of it a tedious process even for researchers with advanced bioinformatic skills. It is particularly challenging to sort through all of the data to identify similar stretches of DNA that may control the same trait no matter where they are located on a chromosome.

BRIDGEcereal is designed to transform the process of identifying large DNA variation from tedious to efficient.

"By simply providing BRIDGEcereal with the sequence of DNA you are interested in, it will complete the search process in less than one minute." explained ARS research biologist Xianran Li, the leader of the BRIDGEcereal project. Li is with the ARS Wheat Health, Genetics, and Quality Research Unit in Pullman, Washington.

"And BRIDGEcereal will organize the data it finds and present it to you in easily understood charts that highlight any patterns of where that DNA is," Li added.

An innovative web app developed by ARS and Washington State University scientists is speeding up analysis of the huge amounts of genomic data now available about cereal crops such as wheat.

It only took a minute for BRIDGEcereal to identify a promising candidate gene as the controller of a wheat mutation that reduces the length of awns, the bristle-like extensions from the wheat grain head. It had been known since the 1940s that a gene on wheat chromosome 4A controls awn development, which is an iconic wheat trait. But the exact gene controlling that trait has remained unknown.

"By searching dozens of potential genes through BRIDGEcereal, we were able to quickly identify a gene with a large DNA variation as the one that has been eluding researchers," Li said.

The scientists also designed BRIDGEcereal to be self-teachingalso called unsupervised machine-learningmeaning BRIDGEcereal can autonomously learn to recognize new patterns without the need for explicit instructions to follow.

"So what we've developed is a one-stop gateway to efficiently mine publicly accessible cereal pan-genomes that will only get more efficient as the data continues to mount up," Li said.

Bosen Zhang, a postdoctoral research associate with Washington State University and co-developer of the web app, added, "Researchers will find BRIDGEcereal to be an invaluable tool for selecting and prioritizing candidate genes that control specific traits in cereal crops."

BRIDGEcereal was first developed to work with wheat. It has already been adapted to analyze similar data from barley, maize, sorghum, and rice. This research was published in the journal Molecular Plant.

The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in U.S. agricultural research results in $20 of economic impact.

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BRIDGEcereal: Self-Teaching Web App Improves Speed, Accuracy ... - Agricultural Research

Published 9:00 am Thursday, June 8, 2023

A new federal bill would require a DNA test to determine the relationship between illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. with children. The End Child Trafficking Now Act, reintroduced Wednesday by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), of Brookhaven, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), comes on the heels of the Department of Homeland Security reportedly ending all DNA familial testing at the border on May 31, 2023.

The Biden administrations decision to end DNA familial testing ignores due diligence and common sense when it comes to protecting vulnerable children, who are too often being trafficked across the border by sex traffickers, gang members, or other bad actors, said Hyde-Smith, who serves on the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. This bill would be a step toward strengthening border security and helping children.

As many as 30 percent of children DNA tested were found not to be related to the illegal immigrants posing as family members, Blackburn said. Meanwhile, drug cartels and gangs use minors to falsely present themselves as family units and seek asylum at our southern border. The Biden administrations decision to halt all DNA familial testing is a grave misstep that not only puts the safety of Americans at risk but also increases the number of migrant children being trafficked. My legislation would stop criminals in their tracks and help protect children from exploitation an idea we should all be able to support.

The End Child Trafficking Now Act would:

In 2019, the ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Executive Associate Directorsaid, It is clear on-site DNA testing has a strong deterrent effect, as HSI agents witnessed multiple instances of individuals confessing to faux families prior to being tested as well.

Additional original cosponsors include U.S. Senators Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), and Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.), and John Hoeven (R-N.D.). U.S. Representative Lance Gooden (R-Texas) introduced the House companion bill.

In April, Hyde-Smith also joined Blackburn inintroducing the SAVE Girls Act (S.1200) that would authorize a grant program to provide resources to states, local governments, and nonprofit groups to help end the trafficking of young women and girls, including, but not limited to, vulnerable children who have been smuggled across our border.

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New bill would mandate continuing to use DNA to help stop ... - Dailyleader

Since the first use of DNA evidence in a criminal case in 1986 [1], forensic scientists have considered biological material (such as hair, skin, and bodily fluids) to be relatively reliable physical evidence.

Listen as the researchers discuss their work in the webinar, Stability and Persistence of Touch DNA for Forensic Analysis

While early technology required a substantial amount of biological material to extract enough DNA to build an individual profile for analysis, researchers have since discovered that they can obtain reliable DNA from more than just bloodstains or visible fluids; they can also obtain it from touch DNA that is left behind on surfaces or objects such as doorknobs, window latches, or steering wheels. Although touch DNA can be essential for forensic casework, it also comes with its share of issues, including those related to:

The results from rigorous analysis of these complicated factors have important implications for how touch DNA is collected, analyzed, and interpreted.

In 2018, the Forensic Technology Working Group at NIJ called for comprehensive, systematic, well controlled studies that provide foundational knowledge and practical data about touch evidence persistence in the real world. That same year, Dr. Meghan Ramseys group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory began quantifying how long touch DNA would persist on certain surfaces under specific conditions. Building on that knowledge, and in collaboration with Dr. Ramsey, scientists at South Dakota State University created predictive models of how DNA degrades on different surfaces under a range of environmental conditions.

The researchers addressed two central questions:

To address these questions, scientists deposited control DNA and touch DNA samples [2] onto steel bolts and cotton fabric swatches. Then, they examined the DNA residue over time, across varying temperature and humidity combinations, and under UV light exposure (Figure 1).[3, 4]

Researchers measured:

The ability to obtain a DNA profile using short tandem repeats (or STRs), commonly used in forensic genetic analysis.

Results indicated:

To predict the amount of DNA degradation over time, Dr. Ramsey worked with her collaborators to fit the DNA degradation data (based on temperature and humidity exposure) to a linear, mixed effects model.[5] In doing so, they found:

To further examine DNA degradation, Dr. Ramsey and colleagues compared the completeness whether the DNA profiles could be submitted to a database for a potential match of two DNA profiles: environmentally exposed touch DNA recovered from steel bolts and unexposed reference sample DNA from cheek cells (Figure 3).

Notably:

Throughout the course of this research, low and variable quantities of touch DNA collected remained a challenge; the low quantities of the initial touch DNA that scientists could recover made it difficult for researchers to evaluate the level of DNA degradation properly. Future work aims to increase the initial amount of touch DNA collected to record its degradation more accurately over time.

Still, those in forensics and law enforcement can glean valuable information from this ongoing research regarding the persistence of DNA in certain environmental conditions. For instance, investigators are more likely to recover useable DNA in cool and dry indoor environments than hot and humid outside conditions. Moreover, they may have better success obtaining DNA from stainless steel objects than fabric.

Collectively, these studies provide the most comprehensive information to date on the persistence of touch DNA evidence.

The work described in this article was supported by NIJ grant number 2018-DU-BX-0192 awarded to MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

This article is based on the grantee report, Persistence of Touch DNA for Forensic Analysis (pdf, 24 pages), by Meghan Ramsey.

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