Category Archives: Transhuman News

It was made public by the Army in 2013 and remained the only photo portraying her as a woman until her release from prison in 2017 -- other photos were prohibited while she was in custody.

It's strangely fitting, then, that 30 lifelike 3D portraits of her face now hang from a ceiling in the Fridman Gallery in Manhattan.

"This is a sampling of thirty possible faces that could be produced algorithmically reading Chelsea's DNA data," said Dewey-Hagborg during the exhibition's private view.

"They represent a wide range of the diversity that exists within Chelsea's genome, a diversity in which that same DNA data can be read."

The DNA samples were recovered from cheek swabs and hair clippings that were part of a correspondence between Manning and Dewey-Hagborg.

It's a similar process to Dewey-Hagborg's groundbreaking 2012 project "Stranger Visions," which used random bits of DNA found on cigarette butts and other litter to create portraits of strangers.

"In 2015 I received an email more or less out of the blue from Paper magazine. She couldn't be visited and photographed at that time and so they reached out to Chelsea and asked if she'd be interested in having a DNA portrait made."

A handful of letters were exchanged over the next two years through an intermediary.

"Chelsea was excited about the idea, but also concerned the she might appear too male in a portrait generated just based on her DNA," said Dewey-Hagborg.

"I'm hoping that people will take away the idea that genetics is not destiny and a kind of push for self-determined identity and a push against efforts to inscribe identities into us, or for external forces to tell us who we are rather than listening to us say this is who I am."

Ruddy Shrock, the curator of the exhibition, defined it as a "a poetic investigation Heather took into issues of identity and ownership of oneself."

Around 250 people were in attendance at the opening. Manning arrived accompanied by friends and her agent, but declined to speak with the media.

She was followed around by the documentary team for "Chelsea XY," which will be released at Sundance Film Festival in January 2018.

She did engage with fans and supporters and took photos with them.

"To have Chelsea out, in a dress, creating art, on this wonderful journey with other activists and people in the media, it's really moving," said Suzie Glbert, one of the attendees.

Jeff Seelbach, a fan of Chelsea and producer at the company funding her documentary, said: "The thing that fascinates me about it is the very unique and terrible situation she was in, that her identity and her ability to have an image and a representation was completely suppressed by the government and by our legal system."

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg also got to meet Chelsea in person for the first time after their mail exchange.

"It was both totally amazing and then completely normal. I mean we had brunch, avocado toast, you know, your typical New York thing. But then it was also just completely stunning to see someone you've pictured in your head," she noted.

"She's [Chelsea] really excited about it, this is her kind of art debut."

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Chelsea Manning sent her DNA to an artist while in prison and the results are spectacular - CNN

COLUMBIA DNA evidence has led to an arrest in a 15-year rape case.

Jackie Lee Jennings of Columbia was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of rape in the first degree and burglary in the first degree in connection with a case that occurred on the night of April 29, 2002.

A Missouri State Highway Patrol lab report from March 27 had compared the DNA profile from the 2002 case to an offender DNA profile belonging to Jennings. Jennings also matched the description given by the victim.

On April 29, 2002, the victim said she was on her way home from T.P.s bar after leaving at approximately 12:30 a.m., when she was approached by a man offering her a ride or to follow her to make sure she got home safely.

The victim said she declined, and on arriving home, locked her door. She said she became ill and vomited, which was odd because she had only had two mixed drinks and was an experienced drinker.

After lying down in her bed for a moment, the victim looked up and saw the man, who attacked her and raped her, she said. She then passed out.

The DNA used by the highway patrol lab came from a fingerprint on an unscrewed light bulb, hair from the vacuum bag used after the victims room was vacuumed and semen left on the victims pants, which provided a DNA profile.

The victim has been contacted and informed of the developments.

Jennings was booked into the Boone County Jail. Bond has been set at $200,000.

Supervising editor is Mike Jenner.

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DNA evidence leads to arrest in 2002 rape case - Columbia Missourian

August 4, 2017 Credit: Newcastle University

Scientists have developed a computational method to detect chemical changes in DNA that highlight cell diversity and may lead to a better understanding of cancer.

In the European study, published in Nucleic Acids Research and involving Newcastle University, experts have established a bioinformatics method that can be applied in hematopoiesis, the process of blood formation from stem cells.

The information of how to form the different cells in our body is encoded in our genome, which is composed by the four letters of DNA.

Each cell type is characterised by its distinct epigenome, a makeup of the genome composed of many different proteins that leave "open" or "closed" different parts of the genome.

Using different makeups, the same genome in one person can encode the necessary information to develop all the different tissues and organs.

The new method developed allows the automatic analysis of multiple epigenomes to identify the genomic locations where the necessary makeup changes to form both healthy and diseased cell types.

Disease biomarkers

Dr Daniel Rico, Research Fellow at Newcastle University's Institute of Cellular Medicine, said: "We have the technology to reveal the different epigenomic makeups and this is generating a significant amount of data.

"We can seriously talk about "big data" in epigenomics research. However, the main bottleneck is to translate all this data into useful information to get insight into biological mechanisms.

"The new method that we have developed will allow researchers to identify the key regions in the genome that show differential makeups depending of the cell types.

"As many diseases are associated to disease-specific epigenomic makeups, this method will be particularly useful to identify the key regions in the genome where the makeup deviates from the healthy state.

"This will allow the development of new disease biomarkers and, hopefully, open a new path for developing therapies targeting the epigenomes."

The method allows the integration of a variety of epigenomic datasets to classify different samples and automatically identify genomic regions in which changes affect the definition of cell type.

Genome makeup

The human genome is a dull sequence of letters but it becomes alive thanks to the help of the epigenome.

The genome is like a book in which letters follow each other without empty spaces, full stops or commas. It would be very hard to read this book, utterly impossible to understand it.

However, with the simple addition of punctuation marks we can read and understand the meaning of that apparently dull sequence of letters.

This is the great task accomplished by the epigenome, which is composed of chemical changes on the DNA that allow us and the cell to understand how to read and interpret the genome.

For this reason, studying the epigenome is important to understanding how development can give rise to the large variety of cell types forming tissues and organs, all starting from a single cell and a single genome.

The epigenome is also often involved in explaining how a healthy cell gives rise to a tumour after a malignant transformation. But, despite the collections of data available until now, locating those regions of the genome with chemical changes and type of changes remains a challenge.

These chemical changes are produced during development and throughout life as an effect of external factors, such as lifestyle, and they can be triggers for diseases like cancer. Identifying epigenetic biomarkers is fundamental to enable new diagnostic and treatment options.

Molecular classifications have been widely used taking into account gene expression levels as biomarkers, using their on/off state.

This method lets researchers identify those regions that are involved in regulating the on/off gene state like biological switches. These regions could be used as epigenetic biomarkers that complement the actual molecular classifications.

Important development

Enrique Carrillo-de-Santa-Pau, co-first author of the study, from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, said: "The development of this type of methods is very important.

"Up to now differences between cell types had mostly been characterised at the levels of genes that are either switched on or off, that is the final product of the epigenomic regulation, but we did not know where the switches for these genes were (encoded in the epigenome).

"This acquired knowledge is fundamental to enable new therapies based on acting on the correct switches in cases where the cell loses control in diseases such as cancer.

"Understanding this level of regulation will take us one step further in the personalised medicine agenda."

It is hoped that this method will allow scientists to identify new epigenetic biomarkers, which may be used in personalised medicine diagnosis and treatment.

Explore further: First roadmap of stomach cancer super-enhancers paves the way for new treatments

More information: Automatic identification of informative regions with epigenomic changes associated to hematopoiesis, Nucleic Acids Research, doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx618

A*STAR researchers have homed in on a potential new way to diagnose and treat stomach cancer, through the mapping of an unprecedented catalog of almost 3,800 super-enhancers from stomach cancer tumor cells.

A team from the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project (PCGP) has mapped the intricate changes in the "epigenetic" organization of the nucleus to determine how retinal ...

Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have successfully developed a method to map the epigenome using 100 times fewer cells than was previously possible. The discovery, published in the journal Developmental ...

An international research collaboration led by University College Dublin (UCD), involving the UCD spin-out company OncoMark and Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona, has identified a set of biomarkers strongly ...

In a guest blog, Professor David Roberts from the Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences at Oxford University explains the role of non-DNA genetic information in disease and development.

The sequencing of the human genome laid the foundation for the study of genetic variation and its links to a wide range of diseases. But the genome itself is only part of the story, as genes can be switched on and off by ...

(Phys.org)An international team of researchers has found evidence showing that maize evolved to survive in the U.S. southwest highlands thousands of years ago. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group ...

A chance discovery has opened up a new method of finding unknown viruses.

When trouble looms, the fish-scale geckos of Madagascar resort to what might seem like an extreme form of self-defensetearing out of their own skin.

Scientists have developed a computational method to detect chemical changes in DNA that highlight cell diversity and may lead to a better understanding of cancer.

A new study led by the Australian National University (ANU) has found that plants are able to forget stressful weather events to rapidly recover.

In the last 20 years, the field of animal coloration research has experienced explosive growth thanks to numerous technological advances, and it now stands on the threshold of a new era.

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New digital method enhances understanding of changes in DNA's makeup - Phys.Org

Many sunscreens wear off over the course of a day, but a DNA material developed by US scientists gets better at absorbing ultraviolet (UV) light the longer it is exposed to it.1The transparent coating could protect skin particularly damaged areas from sunburn over long periods of time.

UV light is particularly bad for wounds because the skin is already weakened, explainsClara Piccirilloa materials chemist from the Portuguese Catholic University, whopreviously developed a fishbone-derived sunscreenbut wasnt involved in this study. There is a lot of research to try and find multifunctional materials for dressings, for instance something antibacterial that at the same time protects from UV light.

To do this,Guy Germanfrom Binghamton University and his colleagues looked to one of the most common polymers on the planet: DNA. The team had already established that self-assembled DNA films could absorb UV light. But what was really interesting is that the more UV we dosed the films with, the better they got at attenuating the light, German says.

This unexpected behaviour is likely to be the result of hyperchromicity: when exposed to UV light, the DNAs strands separate and unravel. New bonds between the DNA chains and changes in the materials crystal structure then increase its ability to absorb and scatter light.

The coating is transparent to visible light, which would make it particularly suitable as a wound covering. You wouldnt need to lift up a wound covering as this might not be a good idea in hostile or contaminated environments, explains German. Moreover, the DNA film keeps the skin hydrated, which has been shown to promote faster healing.2Another advantage is that its made out of DNA, something that we already have in our bodies, so its likely that its not toxic, says Piccirillo. The material is currently undergoing biological testing, German adds.

As to whether the material could also work as an everyday sunscreen, German hopes so. A DNA-based cream could curbworries about the safety of common UV protectantsand decrease the amount ofcoral-harming chemicals released into coastal watersby sunscreen wearers.

However, in its current film-like form the material cant be made introduced into a cream, which requires compounds to be soluble or finely dispersed. It is the formation of the film that offers UV protection, says Piccirillo. I cant see this applied in an emulsion in its current form though that doesnt mean that in the future theyll find a way to formulate it that way.

We have lots of testing and work to do to push it forward to commercialisation status, acknowledges German, but thats another pathway that we are exploring.

This article is reproduced with permission fromChemistry World. The article wasfirst publishedon August 2, 2017.

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DNA Sunscreen Gets Better, Not Weaker, Over Time - Scientific American

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In the Bronze Age, between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago, a diverse group of people called the Canaanites lived in the Middle East. Despite their culture and influence one of the only golden calf idols discovered was found in the Canaan seaport of Ashqelon they left behind little information about themselves. Other civilizations made records of them, such as the Greeks, Egyptians and the authors of the Hebrew Bible. But, without Canaanite texts to cite, scholars view the ancient people as a bit of an enigma.

We havent found any of their writings, said Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist who studies human evolution at the Sanger Institute in Britain. Perhaps they wrote on papyrus but not longer-lasting clay. We dont have direct information from them, he said. In that sense, they are a mystery.

Their final fate, too, was a puzzle. The Hebrew text offers one explanation for the destiny of the Canaanites: annihilation. The Israelites, per Deuteronomy 20:16-18, were commanded to utterly destroy the cities of various tribes including the Canaanites. Those who survived fled or became servants.

But historians are skeptical that either exodus or annihilation occurred. University of North Carolina religious studies professor Bart Ehrman noted in a 2013 blog post that, beyond the Hebrew Bible, there are no references in any other ancient source to a massive destruction of the cities of Canaan.

Now a study of Canaanite DNA, published recently in the American Journal of Human Genetics, rules out the biblical idea that an ancient war wiped out the group. The DNA, when compared to that of modern-day people, shows that the Canaanites managed to leave a long line of descendants. Even if they suffered some defeats, enough people survived that they contributed to the present-day population, Tyler-Smith said.

Tyler-Smith and his colleagues sampled ancient DNA from five Canaanite people who lived 3,750 and 3,650 years ago. Though the skeletal remains were buried in a hot and humid region along the Mediterranean, the scientists were still able to extract genetic material. They mined the petrous bone, a region of skull behind the ear thats also the densest bone in the body.

The geneticists sequenced the Canaanite genome and compared it to genomes of modern people, including Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and others from around the world. The comparison revealed that 90 percent of the genetic ancestry of people in Lebanon came from the Canaanites. (The other 10 percent was of a Eurasian steppe population.)

We can say that Lebanese mostly descend from an ancestry that is found in those five individuals, said Marc Haber, a Sanger Institute geneticist and an author of the new study. What we find is that the ancestry has changed, but it has changed very little.

The unbroken genetic heritage was a surprise. From the Bronze Age onward, that coastal Mediterranean region has been the site of repeated conquering and reshuffling of populations. There was more genetic continuity in Lebanon than in a place like England, Tyler-Smith said.

Its an exciting time to be investigating ancient DNA, the geneticists said. The Canaanites were an ideal case study ancient genomes can provide information not available through historical records or archaeology. But the corridor from Egypt to Asia was a path well-worn by many groups moving in and out of Africa.

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Ancient DNA solves mystery of fate of Bible's Canaanites - The Columbian