Category Archives: DNA

HONG KONG, Sept 6 (Reuters) - A newly discovered hat with DNA evidence proving it belonged to the legendary European statesman and general Napoleon Bonaparte was previewed by auction house Bonhams in Hong Kong on Monday.

Described by Bonhams as the "first hat to bear the Emperor's DNA", it is on display in Hong Kong before it moves to Paris and then London, where it will be auctioned on Oct. 27.

The hat, one of the iconic bicornes often seen in depictions of Napoleon on the battlefield, had been bought by its present owner at a small German auction house that did not know at the time it had belonged to the emperor.

"It was purely a chance encounter," said Simon Cottle, managing director for Bonhams Europe.

The buyer became intrigued when he realised it had inscriptions and other characteristics suggesting it could have belonged to Napoleon, Cottle said, adding that an initial investigation suggested it matched the dimensions and age of Napoleon's bicornes.

A detail of the bicorne winter campaign hat which belonged to late French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is seen ahead of an auction at Bonhams in Hong Kong, China, September 3, 2021. Picture taken September 3, 2021. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

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The hat was then tested extensively using various methods, including electronic microscopy.

"Five hairs were discovered when the contents of the hat were examined very closely," Cottle said. "And two of those hairs were then followed up, and they carried the marker of Napoleon."

The story behind this hat is very different from other Napoleonic bicornes that have been offered on the market, according to Cottle. He said most of them had been handed down by noble families connected to the emperor, or soldiers who picked them up on the battleground.

The estimated price for the hat - between 100,000 pounds ($138,550) and 150,000 pounds - was cautious, Cottle said, as the hat was only recently proven to have belonged to the emperor.

Other Napoleonic hats, with more history in the auction circuit, have fetched as much as $2.5 million dollars.

($1 = 0.7218 pounds)

Writing by Farah Master. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Newly discovered Napoleon hat with DNA previews in Hong Kong - Reuters

An astonishing story of three siblings abandoned as infants and who discovered each other in adulthood through DNA tests is revealed this week.

Helen Ward and David McBride were reunited last year on a television program when both were in their 50s.

Now, amazingly, they have just discovered another brother, John, also in his 50s, and television viewers will see the three emotionally reunited next week when ITV screens a new program, Long Lost Family: What Happens Next.

Without birth records or known parents, they grew up in adopted families.

Last years program, Long Lost Family, revealed that infant David was found in a red tartan duffel bag in the driveway of a house in Belfast in 1962.

Six years later, in 1968, Helen was found, also in a red tartan duffel bag, in a phone box near a hospital in Dundalk, Co. Louth. She was wearing a little hand-made dress and a bottle placed next to her was still warm.

Next weeks program, to be screened on Tuesday, September 14, will reveal details behind how the third sibling, John, was re-united after his daughter Donna noticed striking physical resemblances to her father in Helen and David when she watched the first show.

Journalist Paul Murphy found John swaddled in a blue blanket inside a holdall in Drogheda in a telephone kiosk in May, 1965.

Despite a story filed by Paul appearing on the front page of the Evening Press, the parents were never discovered.

Forty-eight years later Paul and John became friends through a phone call to the Drogheda Independent where the reporter was employed.

Paul, who features in next weeks program, told the Irish Independent, He rang the paper looking for a contact for me and the next morning he was standing in the local hotel waiting for me. I brought him up to the place where he had been found. The phone box was long gone, but it was an emotional journey for him.

He told me he was adopted, that he had two wonderful adoptive parents, and that his life was a good one.

As John meets Helen and David for the first time in next weeks program, he says, Just to actually look into their eyes and just see is there a similar person looking back at you? At least someone else will have something in common with me.

Details of the birth parents reveal a love affair of almost 40 years between an unmarried Kerry woman living in Dublin and a married musician with 14 children.

Both have died the father in 1993 aged 82 and the mother in 2017 aged 90.

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Three Irish siblings reunited after more than 50 years thanks to DNA tests - IrishCentral

While the physical damage of the World Trade Center attacks was concentrated in Lower Manhattan, much of the emotional fallout of the over 2,600 deaths reverberated miles away in the neighborhoods where the victims had lived.

Some parts of the city felt that pain particularly acutely. On Staten Island, 274 residents were killed, including 72 people who resided within two adjacent ZIP codes, 10312 and 10314.

The island has long been known as a blue-collar borough, home to first responders and office workers who enjoyed a quick commute to Lower Manhattan by the ferry.

For Staten Island, 9/11 is a visceral part of our historical record, said City Councilmember Joe Borelli, who was a 19-year-old Marist College student on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the 20 years since, dozens of streets have been named for those who died in the terror attacks. Borelli hears the names of the lost mentioned all the time.

I cant tell you how many birthday parties I go to where someone says, their grandfather or their uncle should be here, he said.

Its just a part of who we are now. Its ingrained in our DNA.

For many borough residents, the ongoing theme since that day has been the ways their community stepped up.

In the worst of times, we are the best of people, said Dennis McKeon, who helped form the WTC Outreach Committee at St. Clares Church, which lost 29 members.

Volunteers first helped with immediate needs, like getting the medical examiners office phone number and connecting people with the Red Cross. They also arranged weekly meetings where families could simply grieve with one another.

We put people into a situation where they knew they could say anything they wanted to say because they were with other people going through the same thing, said McKeon, who ended up leading the group based at the Great Kills church.

Within a few months, the church group became a nonprofit organization called Where To Turn, which focuses on all types of disaster-relief and community service. The name stemmed from what McKeon heard from those families at the first meeting.

When the family members came to the first meeting they said they came because they didnt know where to turn, said McKeon, 64.

He still is available for calls from families, and arranges bus transportation to Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of 9/11. As the years have gone on, that initial pace has diminished, he said. In 2002, he chartered 16 buses, but now its just one.

McKeon said hell keep helping the 9/11 families as long as they need him.

Staten Islanders are always available, all you need to provide them with an opportunity and they show up, he said.

Along a triangle of land bounded by Hylan Boulevard and Fingerboard Road is a memorial known as Angels Circle, where the faces of hundreds of victims of the terror attacks are on display.

Its been a 20-year project for Wendy Pellegrino, who was glued to her television in Grasmere in the hours following the attacks.

I remember watching the triage being set up with the doctors and everybody waiting for them to recover people and bodies, and nobody was brought back, she said.

Oh my God, she thought. Everybodys gone.

That night, unable to sleep, she grabbed some candles and made a sign that said God Bless Our Heroes, and laid it all out on the empty piece of land across the street from her house.

The next day, she found someone had placed a photo of Michael Cammaratta on a popsicle stick and stuck it in the grass. Cammaratta, just 22 years old, was the youngest firefighter to die on 9/11.

The memorial grew from there as she added photos of Staten Island residents and others who died. One mother requested her son face the street so she could see him every morning as she drove to the Verrazano Bridge.

They just needed to see them, Pellegrino, now 72, said.

They went to work, they never came back, they couldnt find them, and for some reason I felt they needed a place to find their loved ones.

Pellegrino moved to New Jersey a decade ago but still maintains the greenspace, which she adopted from the Parks Department and now has images of hundreds of 9/11 victims amid angel statues and candles.

Its the sense of community on Staten Island that keeps her coming back, she said. She decorates the memorial for holidays. People come to celebrate loved ones birthdays or place new ornaments or statues nearby.

We made a promise 20 years ago that we would never forget, she said.

That promise has been important for those on Staten Island who lost loved ones, like Carol Olsen, whose youngest son Jeffrey, a firefighter, died in the attacks and is in Pellegrinos memorial. He was 31.

In the days and weeks after Sept. 11, Olsen, 81, said she mostly stayed at home, keeping busy with all of the things that needed to be done, she said.

She learned of a group organized by the FDNY for the parents of those who died.

It was a comfort to speak openly with other people going through similar mourning, she said, even though she mostly dealt with her emotions alone.

Grief is private, she said. Grief is when youre driving and you would scream because no one would hear you.

She still found comfort in the small moments, like when the husband of her closest friend, a firefighter who also worked a side job for a butcher, would stop by after his deliveries to check on her.

The bell would ring, and hes standing on the porch and hed say, you OK, Ca?, she said.

And that meant the world.

Twenty years later, those small moments still matter, she said. And the neighbors are just as important now as they were in the months after 9/11. Olsen flies the Flag of Heroes from her house every anniversary, and so does a neighbor, who is like family to her.

My neighbors never lose sight that it is 9/11, we are who we are, she said. That never gets ignored.

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For Staten Island, 9/11 Terror is Ingrained in Our DNA - THE CITY

One popular science-y argument for God is that DNA is information. In fact, its not only information, its a software program. Programs require programmers, and for DNA, this programmer must be God.

For example, Scott Minnich, an associate professor of microbiology and a fellow at the Discovery Institute, said during the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, The sophistication of the information storage system in nucleic acids of RNA and DNA [have] been likened to digital code that surpasses anything that a software engineer at Microsoft at this point can produce. Stephen Meyer, also of the Discovery Institute, said, DNA functions like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers.

But how does DNA brings anything new to the conversation? The idea that the human body is like a designed machine has been in vogue ever since modern machines. The heart is like a pump, nerves are like wires, arteries are like pipes, the digestive system is like a chemical factory, eyes and ears are like cameras and microphones, and so on. We dont hear, Animals arteries and veins are like the water and drain pipes in a house, so there must be a celestial Plumber!

I dont find the celestial Programmer claim much more compelling, but lets push on and respond to the apologists claim that programs (in the form of DNA) require programmers.

As a brief detour, notice how we tell natural and manmade things apart. Nature and human designers typically do things very differently. This excerpt from my book Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change explores the issue:

By the 1880s, first generation mechanical typesetters were in use. Mark Twain was interested in new technology and invested in the Paige typesetter, backing it against its primary competitor, the Mergenthaler Linotype machine. The Paige was faster and had more capabilities. However, the complicated machine contained 18,000 parts and weighed three tons, making it more expensive and less reliable. As the market battle wore on, Twain sunk more and more money into the project, but it eventually failed in 1894. It did so largely because the machine deliberately mimicked how human typesetters worked instead of taking advantage of the unique ways machines can operate. For example, the Paige machine re-sorted the type from completed print jobs back into bins to be reused. This impressive ability made it compatible with the manual process but very complex. The Linotype neatly cut the Gordian knot by simply melting old type and recasting it. . . .

As with typesetting machines, airplanes also flirted with animal inspiration in their early years. But flapping-wing airplane failures soon yielded to propeller-driven successes. The most efficient machines usually dont mimic how humans or animals work. Airplanes dont fly like birds, and submarines dont swim like fish. Wagons roll rather than walk, and a recorded voice isnt replayed through an artificial mouth. A washing machine doesnt use a washboard, and a dishwasher moves the water and not the dishes.

With DNA, we again see the natural vs. manmade distinction. It looks like the kind of good-enough compromise that evolution would create, not like manmade computer software. The cell has no CPU, the part of a computer that executes instructions. Also, engineers have created genetic software that changes and improves in an evolutionary fashion. This software can be used for limited problems, but it must be treated as a black box.

The same is true for a neural network used for artificial intelligence. It can be trained to recognize something, but that set of interconnections looks nothing like the understandable, maintainable software that humans create.

As another illustration of the how DNA is unlike software, the length of an organisms DNA is not especially proportionate to its complexity. This is the c-value enigma, illustrated with a chart that compares DNA length for many animals here.

We actually have created DNA like a human programmer would create it, at least short segments of it. In 2010, the Craig Venter Institute encoded four text messages into synthetic DNA that was then used to create a living, replicating cell. Thats what a creator who wants to be known does. Natural DNA looks . . . natural. It looks sloppy. Its complex without being elegant. (See more on the broken stuff in human DNA here and how this defeats the Design Hypothesis here.)

If God designed software, wed expect it to look like elegant, minimalistic, people-designed software, not the Rube Goldberg mess that we see in DNA. Apologists might wonder how we know that this isnt the way God would do it. Yes, God could have his own way of programming that looks foreign to us, but then the DNA looks like Gods software argument fails.

Consider more broadly this supposed analogy between human design and biological systems.

But these traits of human designs dont apply to biological systems, and vice versa. So where is the analogy? The only thing they share is complexity, which means that the argument becomes the nave conclusion, Golly, biological systems are quite complicated; I guess they must be designed. This is no evidence for a designer, just an unsupported claim that complexity demands one. And why think complexity is the hallmark of design? Shouldnt we be looking for elegance instead?

The DNA = software analogy brings along baggage that the Christian apologist wont like. The apologist demands, DNA is information! Show me a single example of information not coming from intelligence!

This makes them vulnerable to a straightforward retort: Show me a single example of intelligence thats not natural. Show me a single example of intelligence not coming from a physical brain. These apologists are living in a glass house when appealing to things that have no precedent (and far too comfortable with things that have no evidence, like the supernatural).

Does the Christian imagine multiple Designers of DNA? Because most human designs come from teams. Are those Designers finite? Are they fallible? Were they born? Because these are the properties of human designers (h/t commenter Loren Petrich).

Christians will respond by pointing to the imagined properties of the Christian God, but this is the fallacy of special pleading. They pick the parts of the God/designer analogy they like and dismiss the ones they dont. This might make it an illustration of Gods properties, but by selecting the parts they like based on their agenda, they make clear that its not an argument.

Actually, we find information in lots of nonliving natural things. The frequency components of starlight encodes information about that stars composition and speed. Tree rings tell us about past precipitation and carbon-14 fluctuation. Ice cores and varves (annual sediment layers in a pond) also reveal details of climate. Smell can tell us that food has gone bad or if a dead animal is nearby. Snowflakes record the atmospheric conditions that created them.

Commenter NS Alito observed:

In my sedimentary geology classes, we used various rock deposition construction patterns to determine the environment in which it was formed, such as preserved ripple structures, proportions of sand vs. clay, silica concretions in sandstone, etc. The various programmers of this information were wave energy, upstream eroded material, water chemistry and other natural physical processes.

The popular DNA = software analogy should be discarded for lack of evidence.

To ask an atheist what evidence would change their mindis to admit were in a naturalistic universeand thus make the question void. commenter primenumbers

.(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/18/17.)

Image from AndreaLaurel (license CC BY 2.0).

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Responding to DNA is a Program, and Programs Demand a Programmer - Patheos

A family was shocked after 12 years to discover that the man was not the father of one of their two children. What started out as fun ended up being something that worried parents from Utah, United States.

In 2007, Vanner and Donna Johnson decided to find their second child. However, after trying naturally, the couple opted for IVF without knowing what was going to happen next. And it is that although both fulfilled the necessary procedure for the treatment, something happened in the middle.

And it is that the couple together with their children decided to have a test of ADN as something funny but the result showed that the child who was born as a product of medical treatment, did not have the genes of his father.

The family performed the test that came with the DNA kit 23andMe, who acquired it as a game that all members of the family would do. When they received the results a month later, they were in shock.

When I looked at that page and saw the phrase: unknown father I thought what do you mean by unknown father, if I am his father?' He revealed Vanner Johnson remembering the moment he learned the truth. When we saw those results we knew there must be something wrong, added Donna.

The test of ADN disclosed that Vanner is not the biological father of her child and that Donnas egg was fertilized by the sperm of another person, whose name or whereabouts is unknown, during the process of In vitro fertilization. I understood that there is a possibility of some error during the treatments, but it is not really common, it is very remote, revealed the frustrated father.

Video de Youtube @abc4utah.

There were a lot of emotions that we had to overcome. We had to separate what is love for our son, who has not changed for a second, from the problem we were dealing with. How could it happen and what do we do now? Added the man, surprised by everything that happened.

According to the parents, it took more than a year to reveal the truth to their son. I took him for a ride in our car, we were actually going to have ice cream. I wanted to make sure his attention was only on our conversation, said the father.

He knew that his birth was the product of a fertilization treatment so I told him: It turns out that when we did it, something happened and we are not sure what happened, but I am not really your biological father,' added the man. .

However, the young mans reaction was to tell the father how much he loved him, making it clear that it would not change their relationship.

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He took a DNA test for fun and found out he was not the father of his 12-year-old son - Market Research Telecast

We think of DNA as the vitally important molecules that carry genetic instructions for most living things, including ourselves. But not all DNA actually codes proteins; now, we're finding more and more functions involving the non-coding DNA scientists used to think of as 'junk'.

A new study suggests thatsatellite DNA a type of non-coding DNA arranged in long, repetitive, apparently nonsensical strings of genetic material may be the reason why different species can't successfully breed with each other.

It appears that satellite DNA plays an essential role in keeping all of a cell's individual chromosomes together in a single nucleus, through the work of cellular proteins.

According to biologists Madhav Jagannathan and Yukiko Yamashita who authored the new study, that important role is managed differently in each species, leading to genetic incompatibility. The clash of the different strategies between species may be what causes chromosomes to scatter outside of the nucleus, at least in part, preventing reproduction.

"We propose a unifying framework that explains how the widely observed satellite DNA divergence between closely related species can cause reproductive isolation," they write intheir paper.

This "satellite DNA divergence" has been well established in previous research, leading to suspicions about its role in speciation. In the case of the chimpanzee genome and the human genome, for example, the protein-coding DNA is almost identical, while the 'junk' DNA is almost entirely different.

In this new study, experimenting on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the researchers noticed that deleting agene which produces a protein called Prod which binds to a specific bit of satellite DNA caused the flies to die, as their chromosomes scattered outside the cell nucleus.However, that crucial bit of satellite DNA is missing altogether in the flies' nearest relatives, which survive just fine without it.

That suggests these important non-coding sequences of DNA material have evolved differently between species. To take a closer look, the team examined hybrid offspring bred from a D. melanogaster female and a male from the closely related D. simulans species.

Flies bred in this way usually die very quickly or end up sterile. In this case, an examination of the tissue of the hybrid offspring confirmed what the researchers had suspected that the chromosomes (the DNA packages necessary for reproduction) were being disrupted here as well.

"When we looked at those hybrid tissues, it was very clear that their phenotype was exactly the same as if you had disrupted the satellite DNA-mediated chromosomal organization of a pure species," says Yamashita, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"The chromosomes were scattered, and not encapsulated in a single nucleus."

Digging even further, the researchers produced healthy hybrid flies by removing the genes known to damage hybrid offspring (called 'hybrid incompatibility genes') from their parent flies.These incompatibility genes are known to localize to satellite DNA in the pure species.

Satellite DNA mutates fairly regularly, and the researchers think that the proteins that bind to satellite DNA to keep chromosomes together have to evolve to keep up. This then gives each species its own different strategy when it comes to satellite DNA operations.

Next, the team wants to try and design a protein that successfully binds across the satellite DNA of two species, keeping the chromosomes where they should be. That could enable viable offspring between those species, but it will take years to realize.

"Our study lays the foundation for understanding hybrid incompatibility at a cellular level in Drosophila as well as other eukaryotes," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.

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Biologists Just Got Closer to The DNA Secrets That Stop Species From Interbreeding - ScienceAlert

Have you ever wondered where the honey you add to your morning tea and drizzle on your desserts or oatmeal comes from (besides bees)? The easy answer would be to check the label, which typically offers the country of origin along with all those wonderful nutritional benefits. Unfortunately, as the Department of Homeland SecuritysScience and Technology Directorate(S&T) knows all too well, sometimes labels can be misleading, especially when it comes to honey imported into the U.S.

Honey imports have nearly doubled in the last decadefrom 251 million pounds in 2010 to 416 million pounds in 2019which is great news for consumers who now have more access to some of the sweetest stuff on earth. However, this tremendous growth in demand also has a dark side that many might not know aboutadulteration and mislabeling of honey to hide its true origin have become a global issue.

What does this mean for shoppers and our economy? Well, illicit importers, who are economically motivated to evade tariffs or sanctions, have made it a practice to affix fake labels onto jars, indicating the honey is from a different country of origin or disguising cheaper honey as sought-after expensive types. Some illicit actors even dilute honey with ingredients like syrups and sugar. New Zealand manuka honey, for example, commands a high price on the market, up to 100 times higher than other honey types, as it is very in-demand for its putative health benefits. It is also one of the most adulterated types of honey. In a recent lawsuit, U.S. beekeepers claimed adulterated honey from Asia caused prices to plummet and forced them into financial ruin.

Adulterated honey is a tremendous problem for the U.S. honey industry, because it drives the market price down, and U.S. producers cant compete with the lower market value of imported honey, said Stephen Cassata, a senior science officer and acting lab director of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) INTERDICT Science Center. Dealing with this issue is a whole-of-government approach, and we are currently collaborating with other federal agencies (including the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture) on joint operations targeting honey enforcement.

CBP is tasked with enforcing hundreds of U.S. trade laws, including the proper classification of goods under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, and assessing applicable tariffs to ensure that importers pay the appropriate duties on entered goods. To help CBP determine the true sources of honey, S&T enlisted the expertise of theBorders, Trade, and Immigration Institute Center of Excellence(BTI), led by the University of Houston, for a project calledHoney DNA. S&T invested in cutting-edge forensic science that can improve the speed and efficiency in verifying the country of origin of commercially available honey and its path to the supermarket shelvesspecifically, S&T has been looking at how the unique makeups of products coming to the U.S. match how they are represented on the packaging.

This project developed a means to identify honey countries of origin using the DNA in pollen and DNA dissolved in filtered honey, said BTIexecutive director Kurt Berens.

Honey is filtered for a variety of reasons, including the attempt to hide its source plant by making plant identification by pollen very challenging.

BTIs testing method could potentially provide another capability for CBP to determine country or region of origin for Antidumping and Countervailing Duty enforcement, said CBPdeputy director Patricia Hawes. It complements testing capabilities we already employ to determine country of origin of honey.

BTI conducts research to enhance U.S. border security, facilitate legitimate trade and travel, and ensure immigration system integrity, and for several years this S&T Center of Excellence has been working on detecting the source country of honey by identifying the plant species via DNA from pollen. The Honey DNA project started in early 2020.

Thesize of the availabledatabase of knownDNA sequences from particular plants has exploded recently, making it more likely that any DNA sequence we find can be associated with a particular plant species or small group of plants, said BTI Honey DNA principal investigator Dr. Richard Willson, who is also Huffington-Woestemeyer Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Over the past 15 to 20 years, the cost of DNA sequencing hascollapsed by10,000-fold, making DNA-sequencing-based technologies much more attractive for a wide variety of applications.

Through the Honey DNA project, BTI was able to leverage these technologies to establish techniques that will help mitigate fraud and provide authentic and safe food for consumers. BTI scientists developed methods for sequencing DNA not only from whole pollen grains in unfiltered honey but also from the small amounts of DNA leaked from broken pollen grains in filtered honey.

To study the true origin of honey, BTI scientists collected samples from a variety of places, including directly from apiaries in multiple countries, from small specialty providers and farmers markets, from friends traveling overseas, and even from online specialty stores during the pandemic when travel wasnt possible.

We analyzed 300 honey samples from which we assembled country-specific plant DNA sequences, said Willson. We also successfully isolated soluble trace DNA from pollen-free, ultra-filtered honey and sequenced it.

To extract DNA from pollen, Willson and his team diluted small samples of honey with water, centrifuged them to help the pollen sink to the bottom of the test tubes, and extracted the DNA. To isolate trace DNA from filtered honey, the BTI scientists again diluted a small sample of pollen-free honey with water, and then extracted and purified the DNA. The extracted DNA was then amplified and sequenced. These findings were recently released in a report. (Read the final report,PDF, 83pgs., 3.71 MB).

DNA sequencing is performed to find the sequence in which the building blocks of DNA, the nucleotides, are arranged in a given DNA strand, which can help identify a plant species.

When the BTI scientists tested the expensive New Zealand manuka honey, which is derived from the manuka plant, they found that many jar labels claiming to contain manuka honey were not accurate.

The BTI team believes that the Honey DNA tracing methods could find broad applications in other types of forensic cases, including identifying the species of other natural products, and even tracing the origins of imported goods and narcotics. Also, the DNA sequences obtained from this project will enrich the public DNA database and help link occurrences of source plants across the world for a more precise identification of honey origin, said Willson.

This new technology could potentially be one of the tools in CBPs toolbox to intercept illegal imports, said Hawes. We are constantly looking at new ways to do our mission.

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DHS S&T Using DNA to Search for the True Origins of Imported Honey | Hstoday - HSToday

By Michael Marshall

Human brains have been shaped by DNA that evolves quickly

comotion_design/Getty Images

Many of the fastest-evolving sections of the human genome are involved in brain development. These rapidly changing segments of DNA may have played key roles in the evolution of the human brain and in our cognitive abilities.

Chris Walsh at Boston Childrens Hospital in Massachusetts and his colleagues studied sections of the human genome dubbed human accelerated regions (HARs). These stretches of DNA are virtually identical in many other mammals that have been studied, suggesting they have important functions but they differ in humans, implying our evolution has changed them.

Previous studies have identified 3171 possible HARs, but Walsh says it is unlikely that they are all important. Probably hundreds of them are, but probably not thousands, he says. His team set out to identify HARs that have played important roles in the evolution of our brains.

The researchers placed copies of each HAR, as well as their chimpanzee equivalents, into developing brain cells from mice and humans. In each cell line, they tracked how much each gene in the genome was expressed. This allowed them to determine whether each HAR enhanced the activity of genes, compared with the equivalent sequence from a chimp.

Using this and other methods, the team identified 210 HARs that significantly enhanced gene activity in the neural cells. These HARs probably affect human brain development.

The researchers then zeroed in on a gene called PPP1R17, which is expressed in some of the cells of the developing brain and regulated by several HARs, so it therefore behaves differently in humans than in other mammals. They compared the expression of PPP1R17 in the developing brains of mice, ferrets, rhesus macaques and humans. In the macaques and humans, the gene was expressed in the cerebral cortex, but it wasnt in the mice and ferrets.

This gives an example of how dynamic these enhancers are over the course of evolution, says Walsh.

It isnt clear why PPP1R17 came to be activated differently in humans, but it may be related to our unusually large brains. Big brains need lots of cells, each of which is likely to contain harmful mutations that need to be fixed. These repairs take time, and PPP1R17 is known to make cells take longer to grow and divide.

Journal reference: Neuron, DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.005

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Rapidly evolving bits of DNA helped develop the human brain - New Scientist

Study on yeast cells reveals how gene affects speed of damage caused by UV radiation

WSU researchers discovered a gene involved in repairing genetic pathways that can lead to cancerous conditions, neurological defects and cause aging.

The gene named ELOF1 was discovered 20 years ago in humans. It was solely recognized for its role in transcribing DNA. The WSU research team is the first to recognize its role in repairing damaged DNA from UV radUnaiation, said Kathir Selvam, postdoctoral researcher with the WSU School of Molecular Biosciences.

Selvam said he and his team cannot test ELOF1 because it is only found in humans, so they are studying its genetic counterpart, Elf1, which can be found in yeast cells. By exposing the cells to UV light, which can cause cancerous conditions or premature aging, the researchers are testing Elf1s role in DNA repair.

In the yeast cell trials, Elf1 is knocked out of the yeast. The cells, which no longer have Elf1, are exposed to UV light in a controlled environment for about one week. When Elf1 is reintroduced to the cell, it is repaired in about one day.

To analyze the process, John Wyrick, WSU School of Molecular Biosciences associate professor, said a genetic sequencing method was developed. The sequence maps where the damage, which can be randomly distributed, forms across a genome.

Genome maps are then compared to analyze the repairing properties of the Elf1 gene, Selvam said.

So far, results show that cells die more readily when Elf1 is removed following UV irradiation, Wyrick said.

Because Elf1 and ELOF1 are counterparts, Elf1s effect in yeast cells DNA repair pathway would be similar to ELOF1s effect in human DNA repair, Selvam said.

Wyrick said he and Selvams group are collaborating with researchers at other universities. This includes the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, which focuses on ELOF1s effect on human cells.

Wyrick said the research began in summer 2019 and is centered around studying how DNA is damaged, resulting in possible mutations in genes. The researchs goal was to study a specific type of DNA damage resulting from exposure to UV light.

Nucleotide excision repair is a critical repair pathway that helps repair cell damage, Wyrick said. When there are genetic defects in a DNA pathway, it significantly increases the likelihood an individual will have cancer.

NER repairs damage to DNA lesions caused by UV exposure, Wyrick said. Normally, NER goes along the pathway, searching for distorted DNA lesions and tries to repair them.

Its like finding a needle in a haystack, he said.

Postdoctoral student Kathir Selvam, left, stands with Professor John Wyrick, right.

Typically, DNA is transcribed into RNA by a protein called RNA polymerase. But when the DNA is damaged, the RNA polymerase stalls and the damage has to be repaired.

Failure in this repair can cause a number of human diseases, including Cockayne syndrome a rapidly aging disease that can cause neurological defects and prevent individuals from surviving past their teen years and make an individual more susceptible to cancerous conditions, Selvam said.

Essentially its like a car going along and if a cow gets in your way, then you stop the car, Wyrick said.

If something goes wrong when DNA is transcribed into RNA, a NER subpathway is initiated to repair the damage so transcription can continue.

The cow then gets moved out of the way and the car keeps driving, Wyrick said.

Wyrick said ELOF1 likely plays a role in the pathway because it binds to the RNA polymerase and travels with it, helping to repair and bypass the damage.

Basically, we want to understand what genes are playing a role in that [repair] pathway, and what role they play, Wyrick said.

ELOF1 is not exclusive to repairing damage from UV exposure. It is equally essential in repair pathways found in human genetic diseases or mutations, Wyrick said.

In previous research, Wyrick said mouse embryos were not able to develop without the presence of the ELOF1 gene, indicating it is likely needed for survival.

The research is just focusing on understanding the mechanisms, understanding how the damages are bad, Selvam said. And long term, understanding how mechanisms can, of course, lead to improving treatment.

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Researchers redefine gene involved with DNA repair The Daily Evergreen - The Daily Evergreen

Can we recreate dinosaurs from their DNA? A paleontologist answers the question. Image via Deb Dowd/ Unsplash.

By William Ausich, Ohio State University

Would it really be possible to get the DNA of dinosaurs and then recreate them? Lucie R., age 5, Atlanta, Georgia

As a paleontologist thats a scientist who studies ancient life Im asked this question all the time. After all, the scientists in Jurassic Park (and later, Jurassic World) used DNA to recreate dozens of dinosaurs: Triceratops, Velociraptor and T. rex. And if you saw any of those movies, you had to wonder: Could real scientists do that today?

DNA which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid is something in every cell of every organism that ever lived on Earth including dinosaurs. Think of DNA as molecules that carry the genetic code, a set of instructions that helps bodies and minds grow and thrive.

Your DNA is different from everyone elses. It determines many of the characteristics that define you, like the color of your eyes or whether your hair is straight or curly.

DNA is much easier to find in the soft parts of an animal their organs, blood vessels, nerves, muscle and fat. But a dinosaurs soft parts are long gone. They either decomposed or were eaten by another dinosaur.

Dinosaur fossils are all thats left of those prehistoric animals. Immersed for tens of millions of years in ancient mud, minerals and water, the fossils come from the dinosaurs so-called hard parts its bones, teeth and skull.

We find dinosaur fossils in the ground, in riverbeds and lakes, and on the sides of cliffs and mountains. Every now and then, someone finds one in their backyard. Often, theyre quite near the surface, and usually, theyre embedded in sedimentary rock.

With enough fossils, scientists can build a dinosaur skeleton: what you see when you go to the museum.

But scientists have a big problem when trying to find DNA in dinosaur fossils. DNA molecules eventually decay. Recent studies show DNA deteriorates and ultimately disintegrates after about 7 million years. That sounds like a long time, but the last dinosaur died at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Thats more than 65 million years ago.

Dig up a fossil today, and any dino-DNA within would have long since fallen apart. That means, as far as scientists know, and even using the best technology available today, its not possible to make a dinosaur from its DNA.

Although its too late to find dino-DNA, scientists recently found something almost as intriguing. They discovered DNA fragments in the fossils of Neanderthals and other ancient mammals, such as woolly mammoths.

Now that makes sense. Those fragments are less than 2 million years old, well before all of the DNA would decay.

Just for fun, lets imagine that somehow, sometime in the future, researchers came up with fragments of dinosaur DNA. With only fragments, scientists still could not make a complete dinosaur. Instead, they would have to combine the fragments with the DNA of a modern-day animal to create a living organism.

That creature, however, could not be called an actual dinosaur. Rather, it would be a hybrid, a blend of dinosaur and, most likely, a bird or reptile. Think thats a good idea? After all, the scientists in the Jurassic movies tried that. And you know what happened there.

William Ausich, Professor Emeritus of Paleontology, Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: We cant recreate dinosaurs from their DNA because the DNA no longer exists. DNA disintegrates in about 7 million years, and dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago.

Members of the EarthSky community - including scientists, as well as science and nature writers from across the globe - weigh in on what's important to them. Photo by Robert Spurlock.

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Can we recreate dinosaurs from their DNA? - EarthSky