Category Archives: DNA

11 October 2021, 08:35

Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Perrie Edwards open up about The X Factor, DNA and so much more.

The first episode of The Power of Little Mix is out now, a podcast created to celebrate a decade of making girl group history.

In 'The Curse Of The Girl Band, Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Perrie Edwards open up about the first two years of their career. The girl group discuss how they overcame The X Factor's infamous 'girl band curse', and how they proved that their wings really were made to fly with their record-breaking debut album.

We also find out about the origins of the band when host Sam Prance (that's me again guys) chats with Beth Honan, Little Mixs creative director on The X Factor, and Iain James, the co-writer behind some of the girls' biggest hits.From their formation in 2011 to the end of the DNA era, this is how the legend of Little Mix began.

READ MORE: 10 iconic Little Mix songs that should have been singles

Check out a sneak peek of the episode below and make sure to download and subscribe on Global Player to listen in full.

Sam Prance: So to start, we're gonna take it right back to 2011. I want to take you to the moment that Kelly and Tulisa put you together. What actually happened right after the cameras were cut and you'd been told we want you to be a girl group?

Leigh-Anne Pinnock: Well, we got to know each other. We went off to a pub that Perrie used to own and got to know each other and realise that we were gonna be the next big thing. But we just sang together and it was magic. And it was just meant to be. Like, we knew it was meant to be.

Sam Prance: Was there a first song you sang together and harmonised and you were just like, Wow, this is magic!?

Jade Thirlwall: Yeah, I think, was it 'Cry Me a River'?

Perrie Edwards: Yeah, it would have been that. Yeah. Yeah.

Leigh-Anne Pinnock: Or was it Ed Sheeran? You Need Me'?

Jade Thirlwall: Well, maybe

Leigh-Anne Pinnock: No, it was 'Cry Me a River'.

Perrie Edwards: I think it was 'Cry Me a River' or the, what's his name, 'And now you say you're lonely, you cried the whole night through'? Like the arrangement we did. The thing is we hung out for so long, getting to know each other, becoming best friends, sisters, like just having a laugh. And then we were like, 'We haven't actually sang anything yet, should we rehearse?' And then that's when we sang together and we were like. I remember Jade's face. And our mams were literally like, 'Oh my God'! Like, they couldn't believe it. They were so shocked. Weren't they? I think we were shocked as well.

Sam Prance: And you went straight from that, and got through straight to the live shows. But there was sort of this narrative when you started that you were the underdogs. You were the bookies favourite to go out in the first week, there was the girl group curse, you had to change your name halfway through... How was the stress of that?

Jade Thirlwall: Oh, it was like the weight of the world was on our shoulders?

Perrie Edwards: Literally!

Jade Thirlwall: No, do you know what, I think we've really thrived well under this sort of underdog mentality. You know, we've always had a point to prove whether it's from right at the beginning as a girl band like you say. As the weeks went on, we just kept having to prove why we deserved to be there and I think that mentality has never sort of left us our whole career. And I feel like that's probably why we're still going strong. But yeah, it was a lot man, especially back then. We were like 18/19, thrown into the limelight, thrown onto a show like that. It's so intense. I feel kind of grateful that we were so young and naive to it all because we were just literally like, just bouncing off the walls, weren't we? We didn't really understand fully what was going on until we were just in it. which was probably for the best to be honest, to not have to overthink it all.

The Power of Little Mix is available to stream exclusively on Global Player now.

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Little Mix reveal all about The X Factor, the curse of the girl band and DNA | The Power of Little Mix Podcast - PopBuzz

About 2000 years, how did the Egyptians look like? Did they have dark skin and curly hair? A Virginia-based lab has now recreated the faces of three mummies using their DNA. The three men were predicted to have a light brown complexion, with dark eyes and hair and no freckles.

Their findings were published last month at the International Symposium on Human Identification held in Florida, US.

Parabon NanoLabs predicted the faces of mummies that belonged to an ancient Nile community called the Abusir el-Meleq. This site is believed to have been inhabited from at least 3250 BC to 700 CE. Studies have shown that this area was of great religious significance. They were devoted to Osiris or the god of the dead.

In 2017, researchers from Germany published a paper in Nature detailing how they extracted the ancient DNA from these mummies and what the genomes suggest about their ancestry.

Using this DNA, Parabon NanoLabs carried out a comprehensive study and used the information to reconstruct the faces. The company writes that this is the first time comprehensive DNA phenotyping has been performed on human DNA of this age.

The lab used new models to predict the ancestry, skin pigmentation, and face morphology of the three mummies. Interestingly, their ancestry was determined to be more similar to the modern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern individuals than to modern Egyptians.

These results were similar to the 2017 paper which wrote that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than present-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times.

The forensic artist created the likely appearance of the mummies at age 25. They used special three-dimensional face morphology studies to predict principal components of the faces such as the size of the head, the distance between facial features.

Parabon bioinformatician Dr Janet Cady, who spearheaded the work, said in a release that this new imputation technology can also help study challenging forensic samples.

Here is the original post:
Scientists reconstruct faces of Egyptian mummies using ancient DNA - The Indian Express

Global data output will exceed 463 exabytes per day by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. Our existing data storage systems, which necessitate massive amounts of energy and space, are finite, leaving us on the verge of a catastrophic data-storage dilemma. Since our genetic code is typically much more efficient at storing information than existing approaches, DNA-based data storage could be a viable replacement for hard drives.

Northwestern University researchers have introduced a novel approach for storing information to DNA that takes only a few minutes.

The team of researchers used a revolutionary enzyme approach to produce DNA that stores fast-evolving environmental cues directly into its sequences. This technique has the potential to transform the way scientists analyse and record brain neurons.

Scientists rely on multipart mechanisms that incorporate new information with existing DNA sequences to record intracellular molecular and digital data to DNA. This implies that for correct recording, they must activate and inhibit the expression of particular proteins for proper recording, which can take up to 10 hours.

The researchers projected that by utilising a new method known as Time-sensitive Untemplated Recording using Tdt for Local Environmental Signals, or TURTLES, they could accelerate the process. So instead of copying a DNA template, they would create an entirely new DNA. The procedure took only a few minutes to record the information into the genetic code.

Nature is good at copying DNA, but we really wanted to be able to write DNA from scratch, Keith E.J. Tyo, the papers senior author, said. The ex vivo (outside the body) way to do this involves a slow, chemical synthesis. Our method is much cheaper to write information because the enzyme that synthesizes the DNA can be directly manipulated. State-of-the-art intracellular recordings are even slower because they require the mechanical steps of protein expression in response to signals, as opposed to our enzymes which are all expressed ahead of time and can continuously store information.

This could be a viable approach for tackling the rapid expansion in data storage requirements while advancing brain research. This is a really exciting proof of concept for methods that could one day lets us study the interactions between millions of cells simultaneously, said Namita Bhan, studys co-author.

If you look at how current technology scales over time, it could be decades before we can even record an entire cockroach brain simultaneously with existing technologieslet alone the tens of billions of neurons in human brains, said co-author Alec Callisto. So thats something wed really like to accelerate.

Currently, the researchers are progressing towards the genomic infrastructure and cellular techniques needed for reliable intracellular recording, and they believe that other engineers will keenly employ the method to capture signals for their own study.

Read more here:
These Researchers Have Found A New Way To Record Data To DNA Within A Few Minutes - Wonderful Engineering

The remnants of DNA may lurk in 125 million-year-old dinosaur fossils found in China. If the microscopic structures are indeed DNA, they would be the oldest recorded preservation of chromosome material in a vertebrate fossil.

DNA is coiled inside chromosomes within a cell's nucleus. Researchers have reported possible cell nucleus structures in fossils of plants and algae dating back millions of years. Scientists have even suggested that a set of microfossils from 540 million years ago might hold preserved nuclei.

These claims are often controversial, because it can be hard to distinguish a fossilized nucleus from a random blob of mineralization created during the fossilization process. In the new study, published Sept. 24 in the journal Communications Biology, researchers compared fossilized cartilage from the feathered, peacock-size dinosaur Caudipteryx with cells from modern chickens; they found structures in the fossils that looked much like chromatin, or threads of DNA and protein.

"The fact that they are seeing this is really interesting, and it suggests we need to do more research as to what happens to DNA and chromosomes after cell death," said Emily Carlisle, a doctoral student who studies microscopic fossils and their preservation at the University of Bristol in England but was not involved in the new research.

To answer the obvious burning question: No, we're nowhere close to resurrecting dinosaurs from their fossilized DNA.

"If there is any DNA or DNA-like molecule in there, it will be as a scientific guess very, very chemically modified and altered," Alida Bailleul, a paleobiologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who led the new research, wrote in an email to Live Science.

Related: Is it possible to clone a dinosaur?

However, Bailleul said, if paleontologists can identify chromosome material in fossils, they may someday be able to unravel snippets of a genetic sequence. This could reveal a little more about dinosaur physiology.

But first, researchers have to find out if the DNA is even there. Until recently, most paleontologists thought that rot and decay destroyed the contents of cells before fossilization could take hold. Any microscopic structures inside cells were considered collapsed cell contents, such as organelles and membranes, that had rotted before mineralization, Carlisle told Live Science. More recently, though, paleontologists have found legitimate cell structures in a few fossils. For example, 190 million-year-old fern cells described in 2014 in the journal Science were buried in volcanic ash and fossilized so quickly that some were frozen in the process of cell division. Unmistakable chromosomes are visible in some of these cells.

In 2020, Bailleul and her colleagues reported the possible preservation of DNA in the skull of an infant Hypacrosaurus, a kind of duck-billed dinosaur that lived 75 million years ago, found in Montana. The possible DNA was found in cartilage, the connective tissue that makes up the joints.

"We were specifically interested in the cartilage because it's a very good tissue for cellular preservation, perhaps even more so than bone," Bailleul said.

For the new study, the researchers turned to a well-preserved specimen of Caudipteryx held by the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China. Originally discovered in the northeastern province of Liaoning, the fossil has ample preserved cartilage, which the researchers stained with the same dyes used to image DNA in modern tissue. These dyes bind to DNA and turn it a specific color, depending on the dye, allowing the DNA to stand out against the rest of the nucleus. By examining the stained, fossilized cartilage with several microscopy methods, Bailleul and her team showed that the cartilage cells contain structures that look just like nuclei with a scramble of chromatin inside.

Related: Photos: Fossilized dinosaur embryo discovered

The stained dinosaur nuclei's resemblance to modern cells doesn't prove there is DNA inside them, though, Bailleul cautioned. "What it means is that there are definitely parts of original organic molecules, perhaps some original DNA in there, but we don't know that yet for sure," she said. "We just need to go figure out exactly what these organic molecules are."

The imaging definitely seems to show nuclei, Carlisle said, but it's harder to identify fossilized chromosomes, because no one really knows what happens to chromosomes as they decay. It's possible that the contents of the nucleus might just collapse into structures that look like chromosomes but are really just a jumble of meaningless mineralized junk; it's also possible that the fossilization process preserves some of the original molecular structure. (One 2012 study suggests that DNA in bone will completely break down in about 7 million years, but the timing may depend heavily on environmental factors.)

"It would be really interesting to do more experiments into that, looking at what happens inside the nuclei instead of just what happens to it from the surface," Carlisle said.

Bailleul and her colleagues hope to collect more chemical data to nail down the identity of the mysterious structures.

"I hope we can reconstruct a sequence, someday, somehow," she said. "Let's see: I could be wrong, but I could also be right."

Originally published on Live Science.

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These 125 million-year-old fossils may hold dinosaur DNA - Livescience.com

Researchers propose faster method for recording data to DNA, showing promise in fields of digital data storage, neuron recording.

Our genetic code is millions of times more efficient at storing data than existing solutions, which are costly and use immense amounts of energy and space. In fact, we could get rid of hard drives and store all the digital data on the planet within a couple hundred pounds of DNA.

Using DNA as a high-density data storage medium holds the potential to forge breakthroughs in biosensing and biorecording technology and next-generation digital storage, but researchers havent been able to overcome inefficiencies that would allow the technology to scale.

Nature is good at copying DNA, but we really wanted to be able to write DNA from scratch. Keith Tyo, Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Now, researchers at Northwestern University propose a new method for recording information to DNA that takes minutes, rather than hours or days, to complete. The team used a novel enzymatic system to synthesize DNA that records rapidly changing environmental signals directly into DNA sequences, a method the papers senior author said could change the way scientists study and record neurons inside the brain.

The research, Recording Temporal Signals with Minutes Resolution Using Enzymatic DNA Synthesis, was published on September 30, 2021, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The papers senior author, Northwestern Engineerings Keith E.J. Tyo, said his lab was interested in leveraging DNAs natural abilities to create a new solution for storing data.

The papers senior author, Northwestern engineering professor Keith E.J. Tyo, said his lab was interested in leveraging DNAs natural abilities to create a new solution for storing data.

Nature is good at copying DNA, but we really wanted to be able to write DNA from scratch, Tyo said. The ex vivo (outside the body) way to do this involves a slow, chemical synthesis. Our method is much cheaper to write information because the enzyme that synthesizes the DNA can be directly manipulated. State-of-the-art intracellular recordings are even slower because they require the mechanical steps of protein expression in response to signals, as opposed to our enzymes which are all expressed ahead of time and can continuously store information.

Tyo, a professor in chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering, is a member of the Center for Synthetic Biology, and studies microbes and their mechanisms for sensing environmental changes and responding to them quickly.

Existing methods to record intracellular molecular and digital data to DNA rely on multipart processes that add new data to existing sequences of DNA. To produce an accurate recording, researchers must stimulate and repress expression of specific proteins, which can take over 10 hours to complete.

The Tyo lab hypothesized they could use a new method that they called Time-sensitive Untemplated Recording using Tdt for Local Environmental Signals, or TURTLES, to synthesize completely new DNA instead of copying a template of it, making a faster and higher resolution recording.

As the DNA polymerase continues to add bases, data is recorded into the genetic code on a scale of minutes as changes in the environment impact the composition of the DNA it synthesizes. The environmental changes, such as changes in the concentration of metals, are recorded by the polymerase, acting as a molecular ticker tape and indicating to scientists the time of an environmental change. Using biosensors to record changes into DNA represents a major step in proving TURTLES viability for use inside cells, and could give researchers the ability to use recorded DNA to learn about how neurons communicate with each other.

This is a really exciting proof of concept for methods that could one day lets us study the interactions between millions of cells simultaneously, said Namita Bhan, co-first author and a postdoctoral researcher in the Tyo lab. I dont think theres any previously reported direct enzyme modulation recording system.

With more potential for scalability and accuracy, TURTLES could offer the basis for tools that catapult brain research forward. According to Alec Callisto, also a co-first author and graduate student in the Tyo lab, researchers can only study a tiny fraction of a brains neurons with todays technology, and even then, there are limits on what they know they do. By placing recorders inside all the cells in the brain, scientists could map responses to stimuli with single-cell resolution across many (million) neurons.

If you look at how current technology scales over time, it could be decades before we can even record an entire cockroach brain simultaneously with existing technologies let alone the tens of billions of neurons in human brains, Callisto said. So thats something wed really like to accelerate.

Outside the body, the TURTLES system also could be used for a variety of solutions to address the explosive growth in data storage needs (up to 175 zettabytes by 2025).

Its particularly good for long term archival data applications such as storing closed-circuit security footage, which the team refers to as data that you write once and read never, but need to have accessible in the event an incident occurs. With technology developed by engineers, hard drives and disk drives that hold years of beloved camera memories also could be replaced by bits of DNA.

Outside of storage, the ticker tape function could be used as a biosensor to monitor environmental contaminants, like the heavy metal concentration in drinking water.

While the lab focuses on moving beyond a proof of concept in both digital and cellular recording, the team expressed hope that more engineers would take interest in the concept and be able to use it to record signals important to their research.

Were still building out the genomic infrastructure and cellular techniques we need for robust intracellular recording, Tyo said. This is a step along the way to getting to our long-term goal.

Reference: Recording Temporal Signals with Minutes Resolution Using Enzymatic DNA Synthesis by Namita Bhan, Alec Callisto, Jonathan Strutz, Joshua Glaser, Reza Kalhor, Edward S. Boyden, George Church, Konrad Kording and Keith E. J. Tyo, 30 September 2021, Journal of the American Chemical Society.DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c07331

This work was funded by two National Institutes of Health grants (R01MH103910; and UF1NS107697) and an NIH Training Grant (T32GM008449) through Northwestern Universitys Biotechnology Training Program. The research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high-performance computing facility at Northwestern University, which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research and Northwestern University Information Technology. All next-generation sequencing was done with the help of the Next Generation Sequencing Core facility at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sanger sequencing was supported by the Northwestern University NUSeq Core Facility. Gel imaging was supported by the Northwestern University Keck Biophysics Facility and a Cancer Center Support Grant (NCI CA060553). The Keck Biophysics Facilitys Azure Sapphire Imager was funded by an NIH grant (1S10OD026963-01). Protein purification was supported by the Northwestern University Recombinant Protein Production Core.

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Enzymatic Synthesis: Our DNA Is Becoming the Worlds Tiniest Hard Drive - SciTechDaily

Anna Skaya, founder and CEO of Basepaws, is pioneering the feline DNA at-home kits to provide cat ... [+] owners data on making their cats lives better.

Theres one thing pet lovers all have in common: they want the absolute best for their four-legged friends. In March, theAmerican Pet Products Associationannounced the industry reached over $100 billion in annual sales, the highest level in industry history. Thirty-four billion was spent on vet care and product sales, a 7.2% increase. According toSpots, 67% of American homes include a pet, with 53% owning dogs and only 35% owning cats. With more households owning dogs, there are more products on the market to test a canines DNA than feline DNA kits. On Chewys website alone, its a 10-to-3 ratio. However, as technology advances and interest increases, companies such as Basepaws make DNA kits for cats more accessible and accurate.

Anna Skaya, CEO and founder of Basepaws, is pioneering feline genetics while helping cat lovers better care for their pets by providing breed, DNA and dental health reports. With an ever-growing genomic database, she and her team are on a mission to improve the lives of cats around the world by understanding, genetically, what makes each cat unique.

Regarding the number of sequenced genomes from canine versus feline, the goals and available research funding for the two fields look completely different. For example, the99 Lives projecthas approximately 200 domestic cat genomes sequenced, compared to theDog10K project, which aims to sequence the genomes of 10,000 dogs and wild canids and all known dog breeds. At Basepaws, it is correcting this imbalance between the two fields. It is building the worlds largest feline genomics database, currently containing tens of thousands of feline genomes sequenced at either high or low depth.

The idea of genetics really spoke to me, Skaya stated. It was based out of a need that I had from my own cat, an interest that I found absolutely fascinating. ... I got a chance meeting with the CEO of 23andMe. She had just invested in a similar company to Basepaws but for dogs. She was very passionate about consumer genomics for humans and animals. And her passion rubbed off. I watched her speak to our group and it just clicked. I had a cat. I really was passionate about the idea of doing something in science. Im not a scientist, and I had to find a cofounder. I heard her say someone should do this for cats and call it 23andMeow. We all laughed. I went home that night and bought the URL. That was the beginning.

Skayas startup career began at Bazaarvoice. She started at the bottom and worked her way up. Eventually, the leadership extended her an opportunity to build out Bazaarvoice U.K. Once the office was up and running, she decided to go back to school to earn an M.B.A.

Anna Skaya, founder and CEO of Basepaws, speaking at Pet Tech Los Angeles.

While presenting at her last conference on behalf of Bazaarvoice, an investor approached her, asking if she would be interested in a position on a four-person team to build out the idea of City Deal. She put her masters on hold, and within a week, she met the others on the team. In 18-months, Groupon started the process to acquire the company. She then became CEO of Russia Groupon.

I arrived there at twenty-seven, Skaya explains. There was a 200 person team, and the mandate was to get to 600 by the end of the year. We were halfway through the year. Im the CEO, and Im totally freaked out. I go from running a part of City Deal in the U.K. to running the whole thing in Russia. ... My experience with that company really toughened me up. I got there and lots of big burly men were raising their eyebrows. I had a lot to prove. I exited when the company went public.

Skaya then went on to launch two more companies, VisualDNA and breakupbuddy. My claim to fame is that I can sell things online, she smiles. I can get people to look at ads. ... By the time I was done with breakupbuddy, I was done with advertising. I was tired of chasing you around the web trying to sell you things. You could say that I had a little bit of an identity crisis of whether or not it was all worth it. I wanted to do something that was meaningful.

She was accepted into Silicon Valleys Singularity University, now Singularity Group. At that time, the program was backed by Google and based at NASAs Research facility in Mountain View. It focused on the challenges and opportunities presented by exponential technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence and genetic sequencing. During the year-long program, she built out

Without having any revenue, Skaya was able to raise $300,000 in pre-seed funding. Shes been on Shark Tank and has even faced investors telling her they didnt want to invest because they were dog people. She and her team are now about to close out a Series A round in the upcoming months.

Anna Skaya, founder at CEO of Basepaws, Damian Kao, Ph.D. (COO) and Anya Kuzmenko (CMO) at CES.

Had this been a dog company, anything dog, I think it would have been much easier, she comments. Investors that I think would have been absolutely perfect for us did not identify with the problem that we were solving. I remember a very famous investor flew him and half of his team to Los Angeles to meet with us. A perfect fit on every level. Everything was great. It came down to him not being a cat person. ... I have it in writing, Im not a cat person.

As Skaya continues to transition and expand Basepaws, she focuses on the following essential steps:

Skaya concludes, Helping others and seeing them grow is such a great feeling.

More:
How This Founder Is Leading The Way In Feline DNA Testing To Improve Lives Of Cats Around The World - Forbes

Our genetic code is millions of times more efficient at storing data than existing solutions, which are costly and use immense amounts of energy and space. In fact, we could get rid of hard drives and store all the digital data on the planet within a couple hundred pounds of DNA.

Using DNA as a high-density data storage medium holds the potential to forge breakthroughs in biosensing and biorecording technology and next-generation digital storage, but researchers havent been able to overcome inefficiencies that would allow the technology to scale.

Now, researchers at Northwestern University propose a new method for recording information to DNA that takes minutes, rather than hours or days, to complete. The team used a novel enzymatic system to synthesize DNA that records rapidly changing environmental signals directly into DNA sequences, a method the papers senior author said could change the way scientists study and record neurons inside the brain.

The research, Recording Temporal Signals with Minutes Resolution Using Enzymatic DNA Synthesis, was published Thursday (Sept. 30) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The papers senior author, Northwestern engineering professor Keith E.J. Tyo, said his lab was interested in leveraging DNAs natural abilities to create a new solution for storing data.

Nature is good at copying DNA, but we really wanted to be able to write DNA from scratch, Tyo said. The ex vivo (outside the body) way to do this involves a slow, chemical synthesis. Our method is much cheaper to write information because the enzyme that synthesizes the DNA can be directly manipulated. State-of-the-art intracellular recordings are even slower because they require the mechanical steps of protein expression in response to signals, as opposed to our enzymes which are all expressed ahead of time and can continuously store information.

Tyo, a professor in chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering, is a member of the Center for Synthetic Biology, and studies microbes and their mechanisms for sensing environmental changes and responding to them quickly.

Existing methods to record intracellular molecular and digital data to DNA rely on multipart processes that add new data to existing sequences of DNA. To produce an accurate recording, researchers must stimulate and repress expression of specific proteins, which can take over 10 hours to complete.

The Tyo lab hypothesized they could use a new method that they called Time-sensitive Untemplated Recording using Tdt for Local Environmental Signals, or TURTLES, to synthesize completely new DNA instead of copying a template of it, making a faster and higher resolution recording.

As the DNA polymerase continues to add bases, data is recorded into the genetic code on a scale of minutes as changes in the environment impact the composition of the DNA it synthesizes. The environmental changes, such as changes in the concentration of metals, are recorded by the polymerase, acting as a molecular ticker tape and indicating to scientists the time of an environmental change. Using biosensors to record changes into DNA represents a major step in proving TURTLES viability for use inside cells, and could give researchers the ability to use recorded DNA to learn about how neurons communicate with each other.

This is a really exciting proof of concept for methods that could one day lets us study the interactions between millions of cells simultaneously, said Namita Bhan, co-first author and a postdoctoral researcher in the Tyo lab. I don't think there's any previously reported direct enzyme modulation recording system.

With more potential for scalability and accuracy, TURTLES could offer the basis for tools that catapult brain research forward. According to Alec Callisto, also a co-first author and graduate student in the Tyo lab, researchers can only study a tiny fraction of a brains neurons with todays technology, and even then, there are limits on what they know they do. By placing recorders inside all the cells in the brain, scientists could map responses to stimuli with single-cell resolution across many (million) neurons.

If you look at how current technology scales over time, it could be decades before we can even record an entire cockroach brain simultaneously with existing technologies let alone the tens of billions of neurons in human brains, Callisto said. So thats something wed really like to accelerate.

Outside the body, the TURTLES system also could be used for a variety of solutions to address the explosive growth in data storage needs (up to 175 zettabytes by 2025).

Its particularly good for long term archival data applications such as storing closed-circuit security footage, which the team refers to as data that you write once and read never, but need to have accessible in the event an incident occurs. With technology developed by engineers, hard drives and disk drives that hold years of beloved camera memories also could be replaced by bits of DNA.

Outside of storage, the ticker tape function could be used as a biosensor to monitor environmental contaminants, like the heavy metal concentration in drinking water.

While the lab focuses on moving beyond a proof of concept in both digital and cellular recording, the team expressed hope that more engineers would take interest in the concept and be able to use it to record signals important to their research.

Were still building out the genomic infrastructure and cellular techniques we need for robust intracellular recording, Tyo said. This is a step along the way to getting to our long-term goal.

This work was funded by two National Institutes of Health grants (R01MH103910; and UF1NS107697) and an NIH Training Grant (T32GM008449) through Northwestern Universitys Biotechnology Training Program.The research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high-performance computing facility at Northwestern University, which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research and Northwestern University Information Technology. All next-generation sequencing was done with the help of the Next Generation Sequencing Core facility at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sanger sequencing was supported by the Northwestern University NUSeq Core Facility. Gel imaging was supported by the Northwestern University Keck Biophysics Facility and a Cancer Center Support Grant (NCI CA060553). The Keck Biophysics Facilitys Azure Sapphire Imager was funded by an NIH grant (1S10OD026963-01). Protein purification was supported by the Northwestern University Recombinant Protein Production Core.

Continue reading here:
Our DNA is becoming the world's tiniest hard drive - Northwestern University NewsCenter

The reconstructed faces based on the DNA of three men who lived in the ancient Egyptian city of Abusir el-Meleq. (Photo: Parabon NanoLabs)

Twenty-first-century advances in DNA technology have revolutionized the way we solve crimes and identify deceased Does. In September 2021, Parabon NanoLabsa DNA technology companyextended their expertise to the ancient mummies of Egypt. The DNA experts have recreated the hyperrealistic faces of three ancient Egyptian men using the same techniques currently used in creating sketches of crime victims.

Sometimes ancient history can seem remote and hard to imagine; however, seeing the faces of historical figures can help bring the past to life. The Parabon team used a technique called DNA phenotyping, which uses genetic markers to predict features such as hair color, skin tone, and eye color. They used this technique on the DNA sequence of three mummies from Abusir el-Meleq, an ancient Egyptian city. The men died between 1380 BCE and 450 CE. Their DNA was originally sequenced for a study in 2017. The study concluded from a set of 90 mummy profiles that ancient Egyptians are more closely related genetically to modern Near Eastern peoples.

While phenotyping is important to modern criminal and missing person investigations, it is particularly difficult when DNA is degraded or contaminated by bacterial material. Both of these problems occur frequently with ancient DNA, such as that of mummies. Phenotyping cannot produce a perfect image even with a full profile, and certain guesswork is necessaryparticularly in ancient cases. Parabon's Snapshot DNA Phenotyping pipeline tool attempts to fill in the gaps by using nearby markers. Dr. Ellen Greytak, Parabon's Director of Bioinformatics, said in a statement, [T]hese techniques are revolutionizing ancient DNA analysis because they operate on fragmented DNA and have been shown to be sensitive down to only 10 picograms of DNA.

Based on the DNA markers the researchers could discern, it was predicted the men shared brown hair, brown eyes, and light brown skin. Using the remains themselves, the team created heat maps of the facial features and their measurements for each individual. Forensic artists then created 3D sketches of the men based on the heat maps and DNA predictions. The result are stunning portraits which appear almost alive despite the hundreds of years of intervening history.

While modern technology has brought us these depictions, the ancient Egyptians themselves left behind very realistic depictions of the dearly departed. Particularly in the Roman period, Egyptians were often buried with painted mummy boards featuring portraits of the deceased. A particularly famous cache of such portraits are known as the Fayum Portraits. They have been called the oldest modernist paintings. As with the Parabon reconstructions, one could recognize these ancient individuals on the street. Whether audiences peer at the modern analysis or the ancient renderings, these images bring history to life.

Heat maps of the mummy's faces helped the researchers refine their reconstructions. (Photo: Parabon NanoLabs).

Portrait of a Youth with a Surgical Cut in one Eye, Roman Period, 190210 CE. This is an example of the stunning realism often found in Egyptian mummy portraits. (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public domain)

h/t: [Smithsonian Magazine, Live Science]

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Thanks to a friend for passing along a new article at the Oxford University Press journalGenome Biology & Evolution(GBE), by several authors (from German and French universities), which opened its discussion section with the sentence The days of junk DNA are over.

That by itself would be significant. Equally noteworthy, however, is the fact that GBE social media editor Casey McGrath an evolutionary biologist employed by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE), the academic sponsor of GBE and its sister journalMolecular Biology and Evolution wrote a Highlight article calling attention to the observation that Junk DNA is No More. McGraths article, Junk DNA No More: Repetitive Elements as Vital Sources of Flatworm Variation, is open access.

None of this is accidental. Since project ENCODE provoked outrage among evolutionary biologists such as Dan Graur over a decade ago, there has been a concerted campaign to defend the notion of junk DNA, often explicitly in the context of anti-intelligent design sentiments. Graur, at the University of Houston, famously argued in 2013, in a major speech in Chicago to the SMBE, that if ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.

Younger evolutionary biologists such as Casey McGrath are watching all this. We should not assume McGrath has any ID sympathies; almost certainly, she does not. But questions about the possible functional roles of apparent junk DNA are just too interesting to allow oneself to be intimidated into silence by academic bullies such as Graur.

See the original post:
Oxford Journal: Days of 'Junk DNA' Are Over - Discovery Institute

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "DNA Damage Response Targeting Therapeutics Market by Target Disease Indication, Therapeutic Area, Target Molecule, Type of Molecule, Route of Administration, and by Key Geographical Regions: Industry Trends and Global Forecasts, 2021-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The DNA Damage Response Targeting Therapeutics (beyond PARP inhibitors) Market report features an extensive study of the current landscape, offering an informed opinion on the likely adoption of DNA damage response targeting therapeutics in the healthcare industry, over the next decade. The report features an in-depth analysis, highlighting the capabilities of various stakeholders engaged in this domain.

Currently, there are four approved poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor drugs that are based on the inhibition of the DNA damage repair process in advanced stage oncological indications. Further, drug developers across the world, claim to be evaluating several other molecular targets, such as ATM, ATR, CHK1, and WEE1, within the DNA damage response pathway.

Although majority of the drug candidates for molecular targets (other than PARP) are in the preclinical / initial clinical stages, drug developers are optimistic regarding the therapeutic potential of this emerging class of drugs. Gradually, a substantial body of evidence, validating the efficacy of drugging the aforementioned biological targets, is being generated through extensive research in this field; this is reflected in the rapidly growing number of research publications and patents focused on this subject.

Driven by encouraging clinical trial results, this niche, but upcoming market, is poised to witness healthy growth over the next decade, with pioneers in the field likely to benefit from the first-to-market advantage.

One of the key objectives of the report was to estimate the existing market size and future opportunity for DNA damage response targeting therapeutics developers, over the next decade. Further, we have provided an informed estimate of the evolution of the market, during the period 2021-2030, based on several relevant parameters, such as adoption trends, and expected price variations for these products.

Additionally, the report features the likely distribution of the current and forecasted opportunity within DNA damage response targeting therapeutics market across

Key Questions Answered

Key Topics Covered:

1. Preface

2. Executive Summary

3. Introduction

4. Market Landscape

5. Key Insights

6. Company Profiles

7. Clinical Trials Analysis

8. Publication Analysis

9. Analysis Of Key Parameters Impacting Drug Pricing And Adoption

10. Market Forecast

11. Concluding Remarks

12. Appendix I: Tabulated Data

13. Appendix Ii: List Of Companies And Organization

Companies Mentioned

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2pv1u0

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Global DNA Damage Response Targeting Therapeutics Markets, 2021-2030 by Target Disease Indication, Therapeutic Area, Target Molecule, Type of...