Category Archives: DNA

PROVO, UT--(Marketwired - Oct 17, 2013) - Ancestry.com DNA, LLC announced today an update to its popular DNA test. Armed with one of the most comprehensive collections of location based DNA samples from around the world and the latest DNA testing technology, AncestryDNA now maps a test taker's ethnic origins to 26 global regions, including expanded regions for people of European and West African descent.

"We are rapidly advancing DNA testing for family history," said Dr. Ken Chahine, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AncestryDNA. "The greatest benefit of this test is that it provides an easy way to help explore one's ancestral background and discover your family's past in amazing detail never before available."

Whether you're just getting started researching your family history or you are an advanced genealogist tracking down a specific portion of a family tree where records are going cold, the new update to AncestryDNA can help people explore their ancestry beyond historical records.

The new update to AncestryDNA includes:

"Five years ago, a genealogical DNA test would predict the rough proportions of a person's ancestry from Europe, Asia, or Africa -- but most people could determine that without the aid of a DNA test," said Dr. Catherine Ball, Vice President of Genomics and Bioinformatics for AncestryDNA. "Today, the AncestryDNA science team has examined more than 700,000 DNA markers to create a genetic portrait for groups of people around the world. By comparing someone's DNA to this core reference set, we can calculate an ethnicity estimate based on 26 global populations."

Updates to AncestryDNA Further Advances Family History Exploration

Last year, with the initial launch of AncestryDNA, a test taker was able to receive results that mapped back to 22 different ethnic regions. Today's announcement marks an expanded range of genetic ethnicity and geographic origins that is currently not available in other consumer DNA tests on the market.

In May 2012, Ancestry.com launched AncestryDNA, a service that analyzes a person's genome at more than 700,000 marker locations. It is available at http://www.ancestrydna.com for $99, plus shipping and handling. The price includes a DNA testing kit, genetic lab processing, online results delivered in a private and secure account, as well as continual ethnicity and cousin matching updates. Additional information on AncestryDNA can be found at http://www.ancestryDNA.com.

About Ancestry.com DNA LLC and Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com DNA is a subsidiary of Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource with approximately 2.7 million paying subscribers across all its websites.More than 12 billion records have been added to the Ancestry.com sites and users have created more than 50 million family trees containing more than 5 billion profiles.In addition to its flagship site http://www.ancestry.com, the Company operates several Ancestry international websites along with a suite of online family history brands, including AncestryDNA, Archives.com, Fold3.com and Newspapers.com, all designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

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AncestryDNA(TM) Now a More Comprehensive DNA Test for Exploring Ethnic Origins

They called it a family reunion, but for most, it was actually their first meeting.

Charlotte resident Vivian Y. Stuart had spent years communicating with cousins across the country she had never met. They discovered as adults they share a DNA match, and their relationships solidified through a mutual love of family history and countless phone calls, emails and Facebook posts.

So last month, Stuart opened her home to six of her distant cousins so they could get to know more about each other and their shared history.

Extended family

Stuart, 65, moved to Charlotte from New York in 2010. A retired clinical laboratory technologist Stuart became interested in her genealogy back in the 80s and is her familys historian.

In 2010, she had a DNA test done to see whether there were any family members she didnt know. The first test was through the National Geographic Genographic Project. But it was through Family Tree DNA that Stuart found a match. She had sent in a cheek swab for the mtDNA test, which uses mitochondrial DNA to find genetic cousins along the direct maternal line.

The match was the Rev. Dan W. Tullis Sr., who lived in California and had DNA on his mothers side that matched Stuarts. She sent an email to establish contact and got a reply from his daughter, Dwainia, that Tullis had died in 2009.

Stuart and Dwainia Tullis, 57, shared an interest in family history and began communicating regularly. Dwainia Tullis had also done a DNA test through the Genographic Project and gotten her results in 2006. The results had already led her to another cousin, Sara McNary, 48, in Atlanta, and cousin Sylvia Payne-Goodner, 62, in Franklin, Ky. While they dont know how closely they are related, Stuart said, their DNA all matches to Dan Tullis.

For the past three years these four family historians have stayed in contact. The more they got to know one another, the more family they found, Stuart said.

Since then, shes been able to connect with three more cousins who also came to visit, all with a DNA match to Dan Tullis Sr., Dwainias father.

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DNA match helped lead to family reunion

Kinetics of DNA Methylation in Eukaryotes
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/KineticsOfDNAMethylationInEukaryotes The Wolfram Demonstrations Project contains thousands of free interactive visualizatio...

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"I Touch Roses" (Live) - Book Of Love - San Francisco, DNA Lounge - October 9, 2013
Official Book Of Love website: http://www.bookoflovemusic.com/ Book Of Love on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookoflovemusic Book Of Love on Twitter: ht...

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"I Touch Roses" (Live) - Book Of Love - San Francisco, DNA Lounge - October 9, 2013 - Video

k9 I DNA - Black Ops II Mehrspieler-Live-Stream
Zeigen Sie jetzt mit dem Live-Stream-Feature Spiele in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

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How Pernell Marsh discovered Marketing was in his DNA

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How Pernell Marsh discovered Marketing was in his DNA - Video

Missing DNA reports that allegedly could tie Jesse I. Chavez to the 2012 murder of Ralph Chavez, no relation, are the focus of a defense motion seeking to reduce Jesse Chavezs bond.

A court wants answers on the delays, which the prosecution chalks up to a lab analyst who left the official request for analysis sitting in a drawer after she left her job at the crime lab.

Second Judicial District Judge Christina Argyres heard a defense motion Wednesday to reduce the $1 million, cash-only bond for Jesse Chavez, 32, or release him from custody. Argyres ultimately decided to conduct an evidentiary hearing at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 6.

Jesse Chavez was arrested Oct. 19, 2012, and charged with killing the son of state Rep. Ernest Chavez on Oct. 8, 2012, at Ralph Chavezs home in the 1400 block of La Vega SW during a burglary. Ralph Chavez was killed by a gunshot, and a friend who was at the home at the time, Michael Mirabal, was wounded.

Assistant Public Defender Cindy Leos said in her written request that the state has no evidence that links defendant to this crime.

Forensic evidence does not link her client, she said in a motion, and the confidential informant, interviewed by the defense, said he never made statements to law enforcement about the murder.

Meanwhile, Jesse Chavez has been jailed for over a year.

Even the state concedes that a change in conditions of release is appropriate.

The confidential informant recanted, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Holmes said in a written response, so links that could be made via forensic evidence have been the primary reason for the delay.

The metro crime lab, which handles both Albuquerque Police Department and Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office cases, was asked in June by the DAs Office to conduct a large-scale analysis of evidence to compare DNA samples with individuals, including the accused.

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Missing DNA reports at heart of defense motion

LEBANON, IN (WAVE) - Touch DNA findings, critical to David Camm's defense, are among the worst and most unreliable examples of analyses she's seen in almost a quarter century, a forensic DNA consultant told jurors in Camm's third murder trial Tuesday.

"I've never met David Camm in my life," Dr. Norah Rudin testified. And I hadn't heard of (Richard) Eichelenboom or his firm. But to see his findings was quite a shock."

Rudin's degree is in Molecular Biology and Genetics, but she specializes in verifying whether a DNA lab's procedures and precautions are scientifically solid enough to justify its findings. Prosecutors called her as a rebuttal witness to refute claims from Dutch DNA specialist Richard Eichelenboom, whose tests concluded that Charles Boney left DNA on Kim Camm's sweater-blouse and underwear, and Jill Camm's shirt.

The defense has argued Charles Boney alone is responsible for killing Camm's wife Kim, son Bradley, 7, and daughter Jill, 5, more than 13 years ago. Boney is serving a 225-year sentence for the murders, but he was arrested only after Camm's first conviction was overturned on appeal. DNA testing linked him to a sweatshirt left at the murder scene.

Boney has claimed he did nothing more than deliver the murder weapon and heard Camm fire the fatal shots. But Eichelenboom testified last week that his findings suggest Kim Camm may have struggled or fought with Boney before she and her children were killed.

Earlier testing had concluded that the DNA samples in question didn't yield enough information to tie them to a specific person. Rudin told jurors Eichelenboom's sampling was so large it created noisy data that made his results unreliable.

"Most of his samples were-crime scene samples, which does not substitute for using known samples," Dr. Rudin said. "He doesn't take into account this missing information, he just pretends it doesn't exist."

Eichelenboom testified that an associate conducted the actual tests; the same associate found to have given wrong answers on profiency tests in 2011 and 2012. Eichelenboom blamed the testing kits themselves.

Rudin described the tests as a fairly easy way to determine basic competency. But Camm's team had fought allowing jurors to hear that.

Before Rudin took the stand, lead counsel Richard Kammen called her anticipated testimony hearsay, because it relied upon email correspondence between the testing company and another DNA consultant. He interrupted her when she broached the subject, and asked that the jury be excused.

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Camm Trial - October 15, 2013: Rebuttal: Camm prosecutors attack validity of Touch DNA

A Swiss research team has been working on a way to identify the origin of pearls without destroying the valuable gemstones. Last week, they reported their success in extracting trace DNA samples from various cultured pearls in the journal PLoS ONE. Being able to capture the DNA fingerprint of a pearl will allow jewelers and traders to trace the origin and age of gems, and also pick out the fakes that are passed off as more valuable than they actually are.

This DNA fingerprinting method could be used to document the source of historic pearls and will provide more transparency for traders and consumers within the pearl industry, wrote lead author Joana B. Meyer, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Despite what you might have heard, pearls are not typically formed when an oyster or mussel ingests a bit of sand. Pearls are actually more like shiny, pretty scabs resulting from an injury or parasite in a mollusks mantle tissue. In response to this injury, the shellfish creates a sac and deposits a mixture of the mineral aragonite and an organic compound called conchiolin, a composite typically known as nacre, also known as mother of pearl.

Natural pearls are produced in oysters without human intervention, and are considered far more valuable than cultured pearls. Cultured pearls are made by grafting a small piece of mantle tissue from one mollusk onto another, often also with a small hard bead that forms the nucleus of the growing pearl and ensures that the gem is as spherical as possible. Cultured pearls sometimes get passed off as natural pearls to unsuspecting consumers. Plus, some cultured pearls are made with haste, creating a flawed gem thats mostly bead covered with a thin layer of nacre that chips off over time. The pearl industry would love to have a way to definitively determine a pearls origin.

But how do you squeeze DNA from a stone? The pearl, remember, is made from a mixture of inorganic minerals and organic material. And that organic matter, plus any stray bits of tissue that have ended up inside the pearl, houses DNA inside it.

In order to isolate DNA from the pearl without destroying it, the Swiss team used a very fine drill to expand existing holes in the gems. Using DNA scraped from the pearls, the researchers were able to trace sample pearls to three of the major pearl-producing oyster species: Pinctada margaritifera, P. maxima and P. radiata.

With this method, it may be possible to recover DNA from pearls that are centuries old. The researchers point out that other scientists have been able to extract DNA from ancient bones, teeth and eggshells.

The researchers anticipate that their methods, coupled with detailed population genetic analyses of reference oyster populations could enable individual pearls to be assigned to specific oyster populations, allowing a scientific assignment of a pearl's origin.

SOURCE: Meyer et al. DNA Fingerprinting of Pearls to Determine Their Origins. PLoS ONE published online 9 October 2013.

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Pearl DNA Analysis Now Possible: Method Could Help Industry ID Fakes, Scientists Say

Oct. 16, 2013 The medical, humanitarian and economical impact of viral diseases is devastating to humans and livestock. There are no adequate therapies available against most viral diseases, largely because the mechanisms by which viruses infect cells are poorly known. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Zurich headed by cell biologist Prof. Urs Greber now presents a method that can be used to display viral DNA in host cells at single-molecule resolution. The method gives unexpected insights into the distribution of viral DNA in cells, and the reaction of cells to viral DNA.

Click chemistry detects viral DNA

For their studies, Greber and his team with PhD students I-Hsuan Wang, Vardan Andriasyan and senior research scientist Dr. Maarit Suomalainen used cell cultures and human adenoviruses causing respiratory disease and conjunctivitis, herpes viruses and vaccinia virus, the latter in collaboration with Dr. Jason Mercer and his PhD student Samuel Kilcher from the ETH Zurich. To label the DNA of an intact virus, the scientists turned to click chemistry -- widely applicable chemical reaction types. Prof. Nathan Luedtke from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Zurich, and PhD student Anne Neef developed a new class of "clickable" chemical molecules. "Our molecule is incorporated into viral DNA without affecting the biological functions of the DNA, and it can be used to label the DNA for fluorescence microscopy," says Luedtke.

Defense response of infected cells visible for the first time

Greber and his team infected human cells in culture with the chemically labeled viruses, and observed the behavior of the viral DNA during entry into cells. "Using this elegant method, we can reveal that not all the incoming viral DNA enters the cell nucleus as originally expected, but a significant fraction remains in the cytosol, the fluids of the cytoplasm," explains Greber. According to the scientists, this phenomenon may be part of the antiviral defense reaction. "For the first time, we can display the localization of incoming viral DNA, and link it to anti-viral defense or infection mechanisms," says Greber. The researchers show that cells of the same type take up different amounts of viral DNA into their nucleus. Greber suspects that the nucleus has antiviral defense reactions, akin to the cytosol, and these defense reactions are variable between cells. With the new method in hand, this is now subject to future studies. The scientists suggest that their procedure can be applied to other DNA viruses, or the HI virus (HIV).

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Zurich.

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Tracking viral DNA in the cell: New method to generate virus particles containing labeled viral DNA genomes